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DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGSc 



Se iliuucei)'6 Worfts. 

AUTHOR'S LIBRARY EDITION. 

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS, 



ESSAYS ON THE POETS. 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 



TWO VOLUMES IN ONE. 




BOSTON : 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 
1875- 






Entered aciording to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, bjr 

TiCKNOR Kill) Fields, 

}r\ the Clerk's Office of the District Court of tlie District ol Massach' tetiS. 



■BEQUEST 



JUNE 5, 1943 



^ FROM THE AUTHOR, TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR 

\j3 OF HIS WORKS. 

[Published by JAiiES R. Osgood & Co., successors toTiCKNOR and Fields.] 

These papers I am anxious to put into the hands of your 
house, and, so far as regards the U. S., of you?- house exclu- 
sively ; not with any view to further emolument, but as an 
acknowledgment of the services which you have already ren- 
dered me ; namely, first, in having brought together so widely 
scattered a collection, — a difficulty which in my own hands 
by too painful an experience I had found from nervous de- 
pression to be absolutely insurmountable ; secondly, in hav- 
ing made me a participator in the pecuniary profits of the 
American edition, without solicitation or the shadow of any 
expectation on my part, without any legal claim that I could 
plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely and 
merely upon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these 
new papers, I hope, will not be without their value in the 
eyes of those who have taken an interest in the original 
series. But at all events, good or bad, they are now ten- 
dered to the appropriation of your individual house, the 
Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, according to the amplest 
extent of any power to make such a transfer that I may be 
found to possess by law or custom in America. 

I wish this transfer were likely to be of more value. But 
the veriest trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it, 
may express my sense of the liberality manifested throughout 
this transaction by your honorable house. 
Ever believe me, my dear sir, 

Your faithful and obliged, 

THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 



CONTENTS. 

SnAliSPE.\RE, 9 

P01>E, . .' 101 

Charles Lamb, 167 

Goethe, 227 

Schiller .... 263 



BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS. 



SHAKSPEARE.^ 

WiiLiAM ShA-Kspeake, the protagonist on the great 
arena of modern poetry, and the glory of the human 
intellect, was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the 
county of Warwick, in the year 1564, and upon some 
day, not precisely ascertained, in the month of April. 
It is certain that he was baptized on the 25th ; and 
from that fact, combined with some shadow of a tradi- 
tion, Malone has inferred that he Avas born on the 23d. 
There is doubtless, on the one hand, no absolute neces- 
sity deducible from law or custom, as either operated 
in those times, which obliges us to adopt such a con- 
clusion ; for children might be baptized, and were 
baptized, at various distances from their birth : yet, on 
the other hand, the 23d is as likely to have been the 
day as any other ; and more likely than any earlier day, 
upon two arguments. First, because there was proba- 
bly a tradition floating in the seventeenth century, 
that Shakspeare died upon his birthday : now it is 
beyond a doubt that he died upon the 23d of April. 
Secondly, because it is a reasonable presumption, that 
no parents, living in a simple community, tenderly 
alive to the pieties of household duty, and in an age 
8till clinging reverentially to the ceremonial ordinances 
of religion, would much delay the adoption of their 
child into the great family of Christ. Considering the 

[9] 



10 SHAKSPEAEE. 

extreme frailty of an infant's life during its two earliest 
years, to delay would often be to disinherit the child of 
its Christian privileges ; privileges not the less eloquent 
to the feelings from being profoundly mysterious, and, 
in the English church, forced not only upon the atten- 
tion, but even upon the eye of the most thoughtless. 
According to the discipline of the English church, the 
unbaiJtized are buried with ' maimed rites,' shorn of 
their obsequies, and sternly denied that ' sweet and 
solemn farewell,' by which otherwise the church ex- 
presses her final charity with all men ; and not only 
so, but they are even locally separated and seques- 
trated. Ground the most hallowed, and populous with 
Christian burials of households, 

' That died in peace with one another, 
Father, sister, son, and brother,' 

opens to receive the vilest malefactor ; by which the 
church symbolically expresses her maternal willingness 
to gather back into her fold those even of her flock 
who have strayed from her by the most memorable 
aberrations ; and yet, with all this indulgence, she 
banishes to unhallowed ground the innocent bodies of 
the unbaptized. To them and to suicides she turns a 
face of wa-ath. With this gloomy fact offered to the 
very external senses, it is difficult to suppose that any 
parents v.'ould risk their own reproaches, by putting 
the fulfilment of so grave a duty on the hazard of a 
convulsion fit. The case of royal children is different ; 
their baptisms, it is true, were often delayed for weeks, 
but the household chaplains of the palace were always 
at hand, night and day, to baptize them in the very 
agonies of death. 2 We must presume, therefore, that 
William Shakspeare was born on some day very little 



SHAKSrEAUE. 11 

anterior to that of his baptism : and the more so 
because the season of the year was lovely and genial, 
the 23d of April in 1564, corresponding in fact with 
what we now call the 3d of May, so that, whether the 
child was to be carried abroad, or the clergyman to be 
summoned, no hindrance would arise from the weather. 
One only argument has sometimes struck us for sup- 
posing that the 22d might be the day, and not the 23d ; 
which is, that Shakspeare's sole grand-daughter. Lady 
Barnard, was married on the 22d of April, 1626, ten 
years exactly from the poet's death ; and the reason 
for choosing this day might, have had a reference to 
her illustrious grandfather's birthday, which, there is 
good reason for thinking, would be celebrated as a 
festival in the family for generations. Still this choice 
may have been an accident, or governed merely by 
reason of convenience. And, on the whole, it is as 
\\<A\ perhaps to acquiesce in the old belief, that Shak- 
speare was born and died on the 23d of April. We 
cannot do wrong if we drink to his memory on both 
22d and 23d. 

On a first review of the circumstances, we have 
rea*ion to feel no little perplexity in finding the mate- 
rials for a life of this transcendent writer so meagre 
and so few ; and amongst them the larger part of 
doubtful authority. All the energy of curiosity di- 
rected upon this subject, through a period of one 
liundrcd and fifty years, (for so long it is since Better- 
ton the actor began to make researches,) has availed 
us little or nothing. Neither the local traditions of hia 
provincial birthplace, though sharing wdth London 
through half a century the honor of his familiar pres- 
ence, nor the recollections of that brilliant literary 



12 SHAKSPEAEE. 

circle witli whom he lived in the metropolis, have 
/ielded much more than such an outline of his history, 
as is oftentimes to be gathered from the penurious 
records of a gravestone. That he lived, and that he 
died, and that he was ' a little lower than the angels ; ' 
— these make up pretty nearly the amount of our un- 
disputed report. It may be doubted, indeed, whether 
at this day we are as accurately acquainted with the 
life of Shakspeare as with that of Chaucer, though 
divided from each other by an interval of two centu- 
ries, and (what should have been more effectual 
towards oblivion) by the wars of the two roses. And 
yet the traditional memory of a rural and a sylvan 
region, such as Warwickshire at that time was, is 
usually exact as well as tenacious ; and, with respect 
to Shakspeare in particular, we may presume it to 
have been full and circumstantial through the genera- 
tion succeeding to his own, not only from the curiosity, 
and perhaps something of a scandalous interest, which 
would pursue the motions of one living so large a part 
of his life at a distance from his wife, but also from 
the final reverence and honor wliich would settle upon 
the memory of a poet so jireeminently successful ; 
of one who, in a space of five and twenty years, after 
running a bright career in the capital city of his 
native land, and challenging notice from the throne, 
Lad retired with an ample fortune, created by his 
personal efforts, and by labors purely intellectual. 

How are we to account, then, for that deluge, as if 
from Lethe which has swept away so entirely the tra- 
ditional memorials of one so illustrious ? Such is the 
fatality of error which overclouds every question con- 
aocted with Shakspeare, that two of his principal 



SHAKSPEAEE. 13 

critics, Steevens and Malone, have endeavored to solve 
the difficulty by cutting it Avith a falsehood. They 
deny in effect that he tvas illustrious in the century 
succeeding to his own, however much he has since 
become so. We shall first produce their statements 
in theu- own words, and we shall then briefly review 
them. 

Steevens delivers his opinion in the following terms ; 
' How little Shakspeare was once read, may be under- 
stood from Tate, who in his dedication to the altered 
play of King Lear, speaks of the original as an ob- 
scm-e piece, recommended to his notice by a friend : 
and the author of the Tatler, having occasion to quote 
a few lines out of Macbeth, was content to receive them 
from Davenant's alteration of that celebrated drama, 
in which almost every original beauty is either awk- 
wardly disguised or arbitrarily omitted.' Another 
critic, Avho cites this passage from Steevens, pursues 
the hypothesis as follows : ' In fifty years after his 
death, Dryden mentions that he was then become a 
little obsolete. In the beginning of the last century, 
Lord Shaftesbury complains of his rude unpolished 
style, and his antiquated phrase and wit. It is certain 
that, for nearly a hundred years after his death, partly 
owin'T to the immediate revolution and rebellion, and 
partly to the licentious taste encouraged in Charles 
II. 's time, and perhaps partly to the incorrect state of 
his works, he was almost entirely neglected.' 
This critic then goes on to quote with approbation the 
opinion of Malone, — ' that if he had been read, ad- 
mired, studied, and imitated, in the same degree as he 
is now, the enthusiasm of some one or other of hia 
admirers in the last age would have induced him to 



14 SHAKSPEARE. 

make some inquiries concerning the history of his 
theatrical career, and the anecdotes of his private 
life.' After which this enlightened writer re-affirms 
and clenches the judgment he has quoted, by saying, 
— ' His admirers, however, if he had admirers in that 
age, possessed no portion of such enthusiasm.' 

It may, perhaps, be an instructive lesson to young 
readers, if we now show them, by a short sifting of 
these confident dogmatists, how easy it is for a careless 
or a half-read man to circulate the most absolute false- 
hoods under the semblance of truth ; falsehoods which 
impose upon himself as much as they do upon others. 
We believe that not one word or illustration is uttered 
in the sentences cited from these three critics, which is 
not virtually in the very teeth of the truth. 

To begin with Mr. Nahum Tate. This poor grub 
of literature, if he did really speak of Lear as ' an 
obscure piece, recommended to his notice by a friend,' 
of which we must be allowed to doubt, was then utter- 
ing a conscious falsehood. It happens that Lear was 
one of the few Shakspearian dramas which had kept 
the stage unaltered. But it is easy to see a mercenary 
motive in such an artifice as this. Mr. Nahum Tate is 
not of a class of whom it can be safe to say that they 
are ' well known : ' they and their desperate tricks are 
essentially obscure, and good reason he has to exult in 
the felicity of such obscurity ; for else this same vilest 
of travesties, Mr. Nahum's Lear, would consecrate his 
name to everlasting scorn. For himself, he belonged 
to the age of Dryden rather than of Pope : he ' flour- 
ished,' if we can use such a phrase of one who was 
always withering, about the era of thr Revolution ; 
and his Lear, we believe, was arranged in the yeai 



SHAKSPEARE. 15 

1682. But the family to which he belongs is abun- 
dantly recorded in the Dunciad, and his own name will 
be found amongst its catalogues of heroes. 

With respect to the author of the TaiJer, a very 
different explanation is requisite. Steevens means the 
reader to understand Addison ; but it does not follow 
that the particular paper in question was from his pen. 
Nothing, however, could be more natural than to 
quote from the common form of the play as then in 
possession of the stage. It was there, beyond a doubt, 
that a fine gentleman living upon town, and not pro- 
fessing any deep scholastic knowledge of literature, 
(a light in which we are always to regard the writers 
of the Spectator, Guardian, &c.,) would be likely to 
have learned anything he quoted from Macbeth. 
This we say generally of the writers in those peri- 
odical papers ; but, with reference to Addison in par- 
ticular, it is time to correct the popular notion of his 
literary character, or at least to mark it by severer 
lines of distinction. It is already pretty well known, 
that Addison had no very intimate acquaintance with 
the literature of his own country. It is known, also, 
that he did not think such an acquaintance any ways 
essential to the character of an elegant scholar and 
litterateur. Quite enough he found it, and more than 
enough for the time he had to spare, if he could main- 
tain a tolerable familiarity with the foremost Latin 
poets, and a very slender one indeed with the Grecian. 
How slender, we can see in his ' Travels.' Of modern 
authors, none as yet had been published with notes, 
commentaries, or critical collations of the text ; and, 
accordingly, Addison looked upon all of them, except 
those few who professed themselves followers in the 



16 SHAKSPEAKE. 

retinue and equipage of the ancients, as creatures of a 
lower race. Boileau, as a mere imitator and propa- 
gator of Horace, he read, and probably little else 
amongst the French classics. Hence it arose that he 
took upon himself to speak sneeringly of Tasso. To 
this, which was a bold act for his timid mind, he was 
emboldened by the countenance of Boileau. Of the 
elder Italian authors, such as Ariosto, and, a fortiori, 
Dante, he knew absolutely nothing. Passing to our 
own literature, it is certain that Addison was pro- 
foundly ignorant of Chaucer and Spenser. Milton 
only, — and why ? simply because he was a brilliant 
scholar, and stands like a bridge between the Christian 
literature and the Pagan, — Addison had read and 
esteemed. There was also in the very constitution 
of Milton's mind, in the majestic regularity and 
planetary solemnity of its epic movements, something 
which he could understand and appreciate. As to the 
meteoric and incalculable eccentricities of the dramatic 
mind, as it displayed itself in the heroic age of our 
drama, amongst the Titans of 1590- 1630, they con- 
founded and overwhelmed him. 

In particular with regard to Shakspeare, we shall 
now proclaim a discovery which we made some twenty 
years ago. We, like others, from seeing frequent 
references to Shakspeare in the Spectator, had acqui- 
esced in the common belief, that although Addison was 
no. doubt profoundly unlearned in Shakspeare's lan- 
guage, and thoroughly unable to do him justice, (and 
this we might well assume, since his great rival. Pope, 
who had expressly studied Shakspeare, -was, after all, 
flo memorably deficient in the appropriate knowledge,) 
— yet, that of course he had a vague popular kno ,vl- 



BHAKSPEAEE. 



17 



edge of the mighty poet's cardinal drarras. Accident 
only led us into a discovery of our mistake. T\\ice 
or thrice Ave had observed, that if Shakspeare were 
quoted, that paper turned out not to be Addison's ; and 
at length, by express examination, we ascertained the 
curious fact, that Addison has never in one instance 
(quoted or made any reference to Shakspeare. But 
Avas this, as Steevens most disingenuously pretends, to 
be taken as an exponent of the public feeling towards 
Shakspeare? Was Addison's neglect representative of 
a general neglect ? If so, whence came Rowe's edi- 
tion. Pope's, Theobald's, Sir Thomas Haiamer's, Bishop 
Warburton's, all upon the heels of one another ? With 
such facts staring him in the face, how shameless must 
be that critic who could, in support of such a thesis, 
refer to ' the author of the Taller; contemporary with 
all these editors. The truth is, Addison was well 
aware of Shakspeare's hold on the popular mind ; too 
well aware of it. The feeble constitution of the poetic 
faculty, as existing in himself, forbade his sympathizing 
with Shakspeare ; the proportions were too colossal for 
his delicate vision ; and yet, as one who sought popu- 
larity himself, he durst not shock what perhaps he 
viewed as a national prejudice. Those who have hap- 
pened, like ourselves, to see the effect of passionate 
music and ' deep-inwoven harmonics ' upon the feeling 
of an idiot,3 may conceive what we mean. Such music 
does not utterly revolt the idiot ; on the contrary, u 
has a strange but a horrid fascination for him ; it 
alarms, irritates, disturbs, makes him profoundly un- 
happy ; and chiefly by unlocking imperfect glimpses 
of thoughts and slumbering instincts, which it is for 
his peace to have entii-ely obscured, because for hira 
2 



18 shakspeahe. 

tliey can be revealed only partially, and with tlie sad 
effect of throwing a baleful gleam upon his blighted 
condition. Do Ave mean, then, to compare Addison 
with an idiot ? Not generally, by any means. No- 
body can more sincerely admire him where he was a 
man of real genius, viz., in his delineations of character 
and manners, or in the exquisite delicacies of his hu- 
mor. But assuredly Addison, as a poet, was amongs* 
the sons of the feeble ; and between the authors of 
Cato and of King Lear there was a gulf never to be 
bridged over.'* 

But Dryden, we are told, pronounced Shakspeare 
already in his day ' a little obsolete.' Here now we 
have wilful, deliberate falsehood. Obsolete, in Dry- 
den's meaning, does not imply that he was so with 
regard to his popularity, (the question then at issue,) 
but with regard to his diction and choice of words. 
To cite Dryden as a witness for any purpose against 
Shakspeare, — Dryden, who of all men had the most 
ransacked wit and exhausted language in celebrating 
the supremacy of Shakspeare's genius, does indeed re- 
quire as much shamelessness in feeling as mendacity 
in principle. 

But then Lord Shaftesbury, who may be taken as 
half way between Dryden and Pope, (Dryden died in 
1700, Pope was then twelve years old, and Lord S. 
Avrote chiefly, we believe, between 1700 and 1710,) 
' complains,' it seems, ' of his rude unpolished style, 
and his antiquated phrase and wit.' What if he does r 
Let the whole truth be told, and then we shall see hoAA 
much stress is to be laid upon such a judgment. Thf 
second Lord Shaftesbury, the author of the Character 
istics, was the grandson of that famous political agitator, 



SHAKSPEAKE. 19 

the Chancellor Shaftesbury, who passed his whole lifa 
in storms of his own creation. The second Lord 
Shaftesbury was a man of crazy constitution, querulous 
from ill health, and had received an eccentric educa- 
tion from his eccentric grandfather. He was practised 
daily in talking Latin, to which afterwards he added a 
competent study of the Greek ; and finally he became 
unusually learned for his rank, but the most absolute 
and undistinguished pedant that perhaps literature has 
to show. He sneers continually at the regular built 
academic pedant ; but he himself, though no academic, 
was essentially the very impersonation of pedantry. 
No thought however beautiful, no image however mag 
nificent, could conciliate his praise as long as it was 
clothed in English ; but present him with the most 
trivial commonplaces in Greek, and he unaffectedly 
fancied them divine ; mistaking the pleasurable sense 
of his own power in a difficult and rare accomplish- 
ment for some peculiar force or beauty in the passage. 
Such was the outline of his literary taste. And was 
it upon Shakspeare only, or upon him chiefly, that he 
lavished his pedantry? Far from it. He attacked 
Milton with no less fervor ; he attacked Dryden mth a 
thousand times more. Jeremy Taylor he quoted only 
to ridicule ; and even Locke, the confidential friend of 
his grandfather, he never alludes to without a sneer. 
As to Shakspeare, so far from Lord Shaftesbury's 
censures arguing his deficient reputation, the very fact 
of his noticing him at all proves his enormous popu- 
larity ; for upon system he noticed those only who 
luled the public taste. The insipidity of his objections 
to Shakspeare may be judged from this, that he com- 
ments in a spirit of absolute puerility upon the name 



20 SHAKSPEARE. 

Desdemona, as thougli intentionally formed from the 
Greek word for superstition. In fact, he had evidently 
read little beyond the list of names in Shakspeare ; yet 
there is proof enough that the u-resistible beauty of 
what little he had read was too much for all his pedan- 
try, and startled him exceedingly ; for ever afterwards 
he speaks of Shakspeare as one who, with a little aid 
from Grecian sources, really had something great and 
promising about him. As to modern authors, neither 
this Lord Shaftesbury nor Addison read any thing for 
the latter years of their lives but Bayle's Dictionary. 
And most of the little scintillations of erudition, which 
may be found in the notes to the Characteristics, and 
in the Essays of Addison, are derived, almost without 
exception, and uniformly without acknowledgment, 
from Bayle.^ 

Finally, Avith regard to the sweeping assertion, that 
' for nearly a hundred years after his death Shakspeare 
was almost entirely neglected,' we shall meet this scan- 
dalous falsehood, by a rapid view of his fortunes during 
the century in question. The tradition has always 
been, that Shakspeare was honored by the especial 
notice of Queen Elizabeth, as well as by that of James 
I. At one time we were disposed to questidn the truth 
of this tradition ; but that was for want of having read 
attentively the lines of Ben Jonson to the memory of 
Shakspeare, those generous lines which have so ab- 
surdly been taxed with faint praise. Jonson could 
make no mistake on this point; he, as one of Shak- 
epeare's familiar companions, must have witnessed at 
the very time, and accompanied with friendly sym- 
pathy, every motion of royal favor towards Shakspeare. 
Now he, in words which leave no loom for doubt, 
nxclaims, 



SHAKSPEARE. 21 

* Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were 
To see thee in our waters yet appear ; 
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, 
Jliat so did take Eliza and our James,' 

These princes, then, were taken, were fascinated, 
with some of Shakspeare's dramas. In Elizabeth the 
approbation would probably be sincere. In James we 
can readily suppose it to have been assumed ; for he 
was a pedant in a different sense from Lord Shaftes- 
bury ; not from undervaluing modern poetry, but from 
caring little or nothing for any poetry, although he 
wrote about its mechanic rules. Still the royal impri- 
matur would be influential and serviceable no less 
when offered hypocritically than in full sincerity. Next 
let us consider at the very moment of Shakspeare's 
death, who were the leaders of the British youth, the 
principes jiiventutis, in the two fields, equally impor- 
tant to a great poet's fame, of rank and of genius. 
The Prince of Wales and John Milton ; the first being 
then about sixteen years old, the other about eight. 
Now these two great powers, as we may call them, 
these presiding stars over all that was English in 
thought and action, were both impassioned admirers of 
Shakspeare. Each of them counts for many thou- 
sands. The Prince of Wales ^ had learned to appre- 
ciate Shakspeare, not originally from reading him, but 
from witnessing the court representations of his plays 
at Whitehall. Afterwards we know that he made 
Shakspeare his closet companion, for he was re- 
proached with doing so by Milton. And we know 
also, from the just criticism pronounced upon the char- 
acter and diction of Caliban by one of Charles's con- 
fidential counsellors, Lord Falkland, that the king's 



22 SHAKSPIIARE. 

admiration of Shakspeare had impressed a determina- 
tion upon the court reading. As to Milton, by double 
prejudices, puritanical and classical, his mind had been 
preoccupied against the full impressions of Shakspeare. 
And we know that there is such a thing as keeping the 
sympathies of love and admiration in a dormant state, 
or state of abeyance ; an eflFort of self-conquest realized 
in more cases than one by the ancient fathers, both 
Greek and Latin, with regard to the profane classics. 
Intellectually they admired, and would not belie their 
admiration ; but they did not give their hearts cor- 
dially, they did not abandon themselves to their natural 
impulses. They averted their eyes and weaned their 
attention from the dazzling object. Such, probably, 
was Milton's state of feeling towards Shakspeare after 
1642, when the theatres were suppressed, and the 
fanatical fervor in its noontide heat. Yet everf then 
he did not belie his reverence intellectually for Shak- 
speare : and in his younger days we know that he had 
spoken more enthusiastically of Shakspeare, than he 
ever did again of any uninspired author. Not only 
did he address a sonnet to his memory, in which he 
declares that kings would wish to die, if by dying they 
could obtain such a monument in the hearts of men ; 
but he also speaks of him in his 11 Penseroso, as the 
tutelary genius of the English stage. In this trans- 
mission of the torch {XafinaSofpoQia) Dryden succeeds to 
Milton ; he was born nearly thirty years later ; about 
thirty years they were contemporaries ; and by thirty 
years, or nearly, Dryden survived his great leader. 
Dryden, in fact, lived out the seventeenth century. 
And we have now arrived within nine years of the era, 
when the critical editions started in hot succession to 



SHAKSPEAEE. 23 

one anotter. The names we have mentioned were the 
great influential names of the century. But of inferior 
homage there was no end. How came Betterton the 
actor, how came Davenant, how came Kowe, or Pope, 
by their intense (if not always sound) admiration for 
Shakspeare, unless they had found it fuming upwards 
like incense to the pagan deities in ancient times, from 
altars erected at every turning upon all the paths of 
men? 

But it is objected that inferior dramatists were some- 
times preferred to Shakspeare ; and again that vile 
travesties of Shakspeare were preferred to the authen- 
tic dramas. As to the first argument, let it be remem- 
bered, that if the saints in the chapel are always in the 
same honor, because there men are simply discharging 
a duty, which once due will be due forever ; the saints 
of the theatre, on the other hand, must bend to the 
local genius, and to the very reasons for having a 
theatre at all. Men go thither for amusement. This 
is the paramount purpose, and even acknowledged merit 
or absolute superiority must give way to it. Does a 
man at Paris expect to see Moliere reproduced in pro- 
portion to his admitted precedency in the French 
drama ? On the contrary, that very precedency argues 
such a familiarization with his works, that those who 
are in quest of relation M'ill reasonably prefer any 
recent drama to that which, having lost all its novelty, 
has lost much of its excitement. We speak of ordi- 
nary minds ; but in cases of public entertainments, 
deriving part of their power from scenery and stage 
pomp, novelty is for all minds an essential condition 
of attraction. Moreover, in some departments of the 
comic, Beaumont and Fletcher, when writing in com- 



24 SHAKSPEAKE. 

bination, really had a freedom and breadth, of manner 
which excels the comedy of Shakspeare. As to the 
altered Shakspeare as taking precedency of the genu- 
ine Shakspeare, no argument can be so frivolous. The 
public were never allowed a choice ; the great majority 
of an audience eve'n now cannot be expected to carry 
the real Shakspeare in their mind, so as to pursue a 
comparison between that and the alteration. Their 
comparisons must be exclusively amongst what thoy 
have opportunities of seeing; that is, between the 
various pieces presented to them by the managers of 
theatres. Further than this, it is impossible for them 
to extend their office of judging and collating ; and the 
degenerate taste Avhich substituted the caprices of 
Davenant, the rants of Dry den, or the filth of Tate, for 
the jewelry of Shakspeare, cannot with any justice be 
charged upon the public, not one in a thousand of 
whom was furnished with any means of comparing, but 
exclusively upon those (viz., theatrical managers,) who 
had the very amplest. Yet even in excuse for them 
much may be said. The very length of some plays 
compelled them to make alterations. The best of 
Shakspeare's dramas. King Lear, is the least fitted for 
representation ; and even for the vilest alteration, it 
ought in candor to be considered that possession is nine 
points of the law. He who would not have intro- 
duced, was often obliged to retain. 

Finally, it is urged that the small number of editions 
through which Shakspeare passed in the seventeenth 
century, furnishes a separate argument, and a conclu- 
sive one against his popularity. We answer, that, 
considering the bulk of his plays collectively, the 
editions were not few. Compared Avith any known 



SHAKSPEAHE. 26 

case, the copies sold of Shakspeare were quite as many 
as could be expected under the circumstances. Ton 
or fifteen times as much consideration went to the 
purchase of one great folio like Shakspeare, as would 
attend the purchase of a little volume like Waller or 
Donne. "Without reviews, or newspapers, or adver- 
tisements, to diffuse the knowledge of books, the 
progress of literature was necessarily slow, and its ex- 
pansion narrow. But this is a topic which has already- 
been treated unfairly, not with regard to Shakspeare 
only, but to ^Milton, as well as many others. The 
truth is, we have not facts enough to guide us ; for the 
number of editions often tells nothing accurately as to 
the number of copies. With respect to Shakspeare 
it is certain, that, had his masterpieces been gathered 
into small volumes, Shakspeare would have had a most 
extensive sale. As it was, there can be no doubt, that 
from his own generation, throughout the seventeenth 
century, and until the eighteenth began to accommo- 
date, not any greater popularity in him, but a greater 
taste for reading in the public, his fame never ceased 
to be viewed as a national trophy of honor ; and the 
most illustrious men of the seventeenth century were 
iio whit less fervent in their admiration than those of 
■he eighteenth and the nineteenth, either as respected 
ts strength and sincerity, or as respected its open pro- 
fession.''' 

It is therefore a false notion, that the general sym- 
;«athy with the merits of Shaksjjeare ever beat with a 
'languid or intermitting pulse. Undoubtedly, in times 
Ashou the functions of critical journals and of news- 
papers were not at hand to diffuse or to strengthen the 
impressions whicb emanated from the capital, all opin- 
8 



26 SHAKSPEAllB. 

ions must have travelled slowly into the provinces. 
But even then, whilst the perfect organs of communi- 
cation were wanting, indirect substitutes were supplied 
by the necessities of the times, or by the instincts of 
political zeal. Two channels especially lay open be- 
tween the great central organ of the national mind, 
and the remotest provinces. Parliaments were occa- 
Bionally summoned, (for the judges' circuits were too 
brief to produce much effect,) and during their longest 
suspensions, the nobility, with large retinues, continu- 
ally resorted to the court. But an intercourse more 
constant and more comprehensive was maintained 
through the agency of the two universities. Already, 
'u the time of James I., the growing importance of the 
gentry, and the consequent birth of a new interest in 
political questions, had begun to express itself at 
Oxford, and still more so at Cambridge. Academic 
persons stationed themselves as sentinels at London, 
for the purpose of watching the court and the course 
of public affairs. These persons wrote letters, like 
those of the celebrated Joseph Mede, which we find in 
Ellis's Historical Collections, reporting to their fellow- 
Collegians all the novelties of public life as they arose, 
or personally carried down such reports, and thus 
conducted the general feelings at the centre into lesser 
centres, from which again they were diffused into the 
ten thousand parishes of England ; for, (with a very 
few exceptions in favor of poor benefices, Welsh or 
Cumbrian,) every parish priest must unavoidably have 
spent his three years at one or other of the English 
universities. And by this mode of diffusion it is, that 
we can explain the strength with which Shakspeare's 
thoughts and diction impressed themselves from a ver^ 



SHAKSPEAUE. 27 

early period upon the national literature, and even 
more generally upon the national thinking and conver- 
sation. ^ 

The question, therefore, revolves upon us in three- 
fold difficulty — How, having stepped thus prema- 
turely into this inheritance of fame, leaping, as it 
were, thus abruptly into the favor alike of princes and 
the enemies of princes, had it become possible that in 
his native place, (honored still more in the final 
testimonies of his preference when founding a family 
mansion,) such a man's history, and the personal 
recollections which cling so affectionately to the great 
intellectual potentates who have recommended them- 
selves by gracious manners, could so soon and so 
utterly have been obliterated ? 

Malone, with childish irreflection, ascribes the loss 
of such memorials to the want of enthusiasm in his 
admirers. Local researches into private history had 
not then commenced. Such a taste, often petty 
enough in its management, was the growth of after 
ages. Else how came Spenser's life and fortunes to 
be so utterly overwhelmed in oblivion ? No poet of a 
high order could be more popular. 

The answer we believe to be this : Twenty-six years 
after Shakspeare's death commenced the great parlia- 
mentary war. This it was, and the local feud? s.ri£ing 
to divide family from family, brother from, brother, 
upon which we must charge the extinction of traditions 
and memorials, doubtless abundant up to that era. 
The parliamentary contest, it will be said, did not last 
above three years ; the king's standard having been 
first raised at Nottingham in August, 1642, and the 
battle of Naseby (which terminateu ihe open warfare) 



28 SHAKSPEARE. 

having been fought in June, 1645. Or even if we 
extend its duration to the surrender of the last garri- 
son, that war terminated in the spring of 1646. And 
the brief explosions of insurrection or of Scottish in 
vasion, which occurred on subsequent occasions, were 
all locally confined, and none came near to Warwick 
shire, except the battle of Worcester, more than five 
years after. This is true ; but a short war will do 
much t(T efface recent and merely personal memorials. 
And the following circumstances of the war were even 
more important than the general fact. 

First of all, the very mansion founded by Shak- 
speare became the military head-quarters for the queen, 
in 1644, when marching from the eastern coast of 
England to join the king in Oxford; and one such 
special visitation would be likely to do more serious 
mischief in the way of extinction, than many years of 
general warfare. Secondly, as a fact, perhaps, equally 
important, Birmingham, the chief town of Warwick- 
shire, and the adjacent district, the seat of our hard- 
ware manufactures, was the very focus of disaffection 
towards the royal cause. Not only, therefore, would 
this whole region suffer more from internal and spon- 
taneous agitation, but it would be the more frequently 
traversed vindictively from without, and harassed by 
flying parties from Oxford, or others of the king's 
garrisons. Thirdly, even apart from the political 
aspects of Warwickshire, this county happens to be 
the central one of England, as regards the roads be- 
tween the north and south ; and Birmingham has lung 
been the great central axis,^ in which all the radii from 
the four angles of England proper meet and intersect. 
Mere accident therefore, of local position, much more 



SHAKSPEARE. 29 

when united with that avowed inveteracy of malignant 
fcclaig, which was bitter enough to rouse a re-actioc 
of bitterness in the mind of Lord Clarendon, would go 
far to account for i:he wreck of many memorials rela- 
ting to Shakspeare, as Ave.l as for the subversion of 
that quiet and security for humble life, in which the 
traditional memory finds its best nidus. Thus we ob- 
tain one solution, and perhaps the main one, of the 
otherwise mysterious oblivion which had swept away 
all traces of the mighty poet, by the time when those 
quiet days revolved upon England, in which again 
the solitary agent of learned research might roam in 
security from house to house, gleaning those personal 
remembrances which, even in the fury of civil strife, 
might long have lingered by the chimney corner. But 
the fierce furnace of war had probably, by its local 
ravages, scorched this field of natural tradition, and 
thinned the gleaner's inheritance by three parts out of 
four. This, we repeat, may be one part of the solution 
to this difficult problem. 

And if another is still demanded, possibly it may be 
found in the fact, hostile to the perfect consecration of 
Shakspeare's memory, that, after all, he was a player. 
Many a coarse-minded country gentleman, or village 
pastor, Avho would have held his town glorified by the 
distinction of having sent forth a great judge or an 
eminent bishop, might disdain to cherish the personal 
recollections which surrounded one whom custom 
regarded as little above a mountebank, and the illiberal 
law as a vagabond. The same degrading appreciation 
attached both to the actor in plays and to their author. 
The contemptuous appellation of ' play-book,' served 
as readily to degrade the mighty volume which con- 



30 SHAKSPEAEE, 

tained Lear and Hamlet, as that of ' play-actor,' or 
' player-man,' has always served with the illiberal or 
jhe fanatical to dishonor the persons of Roscius or of 
Garrick, of Talma or of Siddons. Nobody, indeed, 
Avas better aware of this than the noble-minded Shak- 
speare ; and feelingly he has breathed forth in his 
sonnets this conscious oppression under which he lay 
of public opinion, unfavorable by a double title to his 
own pretensions ; for, being both dramatic author and 
dramatic performer, he found himself heir to a two- 
fold opprobrium, and at an era of English society 
when the weight of that opprobrium was heaviest. In 
reality, there was at this period a collision of forces 
acting in opposite directions upon the estimation of the 
stage and scenical art, and therefore of all the ministers 
in its equipage. Puritanism frowned upon these pur- 
suits, as ruinous to public morals ; on the other hand, 
loyalty could not but tolerate what was patronized by 
the sovereign ; and it happened that Elizabeth, James, 
and Charles I., were all alike lovers and promoters of 
theatrical amusements, which were indeed more indis- 
pensable to the relief of court ceremony, and the 
monotony of aulic pomp, than in any other region of 
life. This royal support, and the consciousness that 
any brilliant success in these arts implied an unusual 
share of natural endowments, did something in mitiga- 
tion of a scorn which must else have been intolerable 
to all generous natures. 

But whatever prejudice might thus operate against 
the perfect sanctity of Shakspeare's posthumous repu- 
tation, it is certain that the splendor of his worldly 
success must have done much to obliterate that effect ; 
&is admirable colloquial talents £. good deal, and his 



SHAKSPEAEE. 31 

gracious affability still more. The wonder, therefore, 
v/ill still remain, that Betterton, in less than a century 
from his death, should have been able to glean so 
little. And for the solution of this wonder, we must 
throw ourselves chiefly upon the explanations we have 
made as to the parliamentary war, and the local 
ravages of its progress in the very district, of the 
very town, and the very house. 

If further arguments are still wanted to explain this 
mysterious abolition, we may refer the reader to the 
following succession of disastrous events, by which it 
should seem that a perfect malice of misfortune pur- 
S'iicd the vestiges of the mighty poet's steps. In 1613, 
the Globe theatre, with which he had been so long 
connected, was burned to the ground. Soon after- 
wards a great fire occurred in Stratford ; and next, 
(without counting upon the fire of London ; just fifty 
years after his death, which, however, would consume 
many an important record from periods far more re- 
mote,) the house of Ben Jonson, in which probably, as 
Mr. Campbell suggests, might be parts of his corres- 
pondence, was also burned. Finally, there was an old 
tradition that Lady Barnard, the sole grand-daughter 
of Shakspeare, had carried ofi" many of his papers from 
Stratford, and these papers have never since been 
traced. 

In many of the elder lives it has been asserted, that 
John Shakspeare, the father of the poet, was a butcher, 
and in others that he was a woolstapler. It is now 
settled beyond dispute that he was a glover. This was 
his professed occupation in Stratford, though it is cer- 
tain that, with this leading trade, from which he took 
bis denomination, he combined some collateral pur- 



82 SHAKSPEARE. 

suits ; and it is possible enough that, as openingt 
offered, he may have meddled with many. In that 
age, in a provincial town, nothing like the exquisite 
subdivision of labor was attempted which W3 now see 
realized in the great cities of Christendom. And one 
trade is often found to play into another with so much 
reciprocal advantage, that even in our own days we 
do not much wonder at an enterprising man, in coun- 
try places, who combines several in his own person. 
Accordingly, John Shakspeare is known to have united 
Avith his town calling the rural and miscellaneous oc- 
cupations of a farmer. 

Meantime his avowed business stood upon a very 
different footing from the same trade as it is exercised 
in modern times. Gloves were in that age an article 
of dress more costly by mucn, find more elaborately 
decorated, than in our own. They were a customary 
present from some cities to the judges of assize, and 
to other official persons ; a custom of ancient standing, 
and in some places, we believe, still subsisting ; and in 
such cases it is reasonable to suppose that the gloves 
must originally have been more valuable than the 
trivial modern article of the same name. So also, 
perhaps, in their origin, of the gloves given at funerals. 
In reality, whenever the simplicity of an age makes it 
difficult to renew the parts of a wardrobe, except in 
dpital towns of difficult access, prudence suggests that 
such wares should be manufactured of more durable 
materials ; and, being so, they become obviously sus- 
ceptible of more lavish ornament. But it will not 
follow, from this essential difference in the gloves of 
Shakspeare's age, that the glover's occupation waa 
more lucrative. Doubtless he sold more costly gloves. 



SHAKSPEARE. 33 

and upon eact pair had a larger profit, but for that 
very reason he sold fewer. Two or three gentlemen 
' of worship ' in the neighborhood might occasionally 
require a pair of gloves, but it is very doubtful whether 
any inhabitant of Stratford would ever call for so mere 
a luxury. 

The practical result, at all events, of John Shak- 
gpeare's vai-ious pursuits, does not appear permanently 
to have met the demands of his establishment, and 
in his maturer years there are indications still surviv- 
ing that he was under a cloud of embarrassment. He 
certainly lost at one time his social position in the town 
of Stratford ; but there is a strong presumption, in 
our construction of the case, that he finally retrieved 
it ; and for this retrieval of a station, which he had 
forfeited by personal misfortunes or neglect, he was 
altogether indebted to the filial piety of his immortal 
son. 

Meantime the earlier years of the elder Shakspeare 
wore the aspect of rising prosperity, however unsound 
might ba the basis on which it rested. There can be 
little doubt that William Shakspeare, from his birth up 
to his tenth or perhaps his eleventh year, lived in care- 
less plenty, and saw nothing in his father's house but 
that style of liberal housekeeping, which has ever dis- 
tinguished the upper yeomanry and the rural gentry 
of England. Probable enough it is, that the resources 
for meeting this liberality were not strictly commen- 
surate with the family income, but were sometimes 
allowed to entrench, by means of loans or mortgages, 
upon capital funds. The stress upon the family finan- 
ces w as perhaps at times severe ; and that it was borne 
at all, must be imputed to the large and even splendifi 



34 SHAKSPEARE 

portion whicL John Shakspeare received witii his 
wife. 

This lady, for such she really was in an eminent 
sense, by birth as well as by connections, bore the 
beautiful name of Mary Arden, a name derived from 
the ancient forest district ^o of the country ; and doubt- 
less she merits a more elaborate notice than our slender 
materials will furnish. To have been the mother of 
Shakspeare, — how august a title to the reverence of 
infinite generations and of centuries beyond the vision 
of prophecy. A plausible hypothesis has been started 
in modern times, that the facial structure, and that the 
intellectual conformation, may be deduced more fre- 
quently from the corresponding characteristics in the 
mother than in the father. It is certain that no very 
great man has ever existed, but that his greatness has 
been rehearsed and predicted in one or other of his 
parents. And it cannot be denied that in the most 
eminent men, where we have had the means of pursu- 
ing the investigation, the mother has more frequently 
been repeated and reproduced than the father. We 
tiave known cases where the mother has furnished all 
the intellect, and the father all the moral sensibility, 
upon which assumption, the wonder ceases that Cicero, 
Lord Chesterfield, and other brilliant men, who took 
the utmost pains with their sons, should have failed so 
conspif-uously ; for possibly the mothers had bee!i 
women of excessive and even exemplary stupidity. 
In the case of Shakspeare, each parent, if we had any 
means of recovering their characteristics, could not fail 
to furnish a £tudy of the most profound interest ; f.nd 
with regard to his mother in particular, if the modern 
hypothesis be true, and if we are indeed to deduce 



SHAKSPEARE. 35 

from her tlic stupendous intellect of her son, in that 
case she must have been a benefacti'ess to her hus- 
band's family, beyond the promises of fairy land or the 
dreams of romance ; for it is certain that to her chiefly 
this family was also indebted for their worldly comfort. 
Mary Arden was the youngest daughter and the 
heiress of Robert Arden, of Wilmecote, Esq., in the 
county of Warwick. The family of Arden was even 
then of great antiquity. About one century and a 
quarter before the birth of William Shakspeare, a 
person bearing the same name as his maternal grand- 
father had been returned by the commissioners in their 
lis' of the Warwickshire gentry ; he was there styled 
Robert Arden, Esq., of Bromich. This was in 1433, 
or the 12th year of Henry VI. In Henry VH.'s reign, 
the Ardcn's received a grant of lands from the crown ; 
and in 1568, four years after the birth of William 
Shakspeare, Edward Arden, of the same family, was 
sheriff of the county. Mary Arden was, therefore, a 
young lady of excellent descent and connections, and 
an heiress of considerable wealth. She brought to her 
husband, as her marriage portion, the landed estate of 
Asbies, which, upon any just valuation, must be con- 
sidered as a handsome dowry for a woman of her 
station. As this point has been contested, and as it 
goes a great way towards determining the exact social 
position of the poet's parents, let us be excused for 
sifting it a little more narrowly than might else seem 
■warranted by the proportions of our present life. 
Every question which it can be reasonable to raise at 
all, it must be reasonable to treat with at least so much 
of minute research, as may justify the conclusions 
which it is made to support. 



36 SHAKSPEAKE. 

rhe estate of Asbies contained fifty acres of arable 
land, six of meadow, and a right of commonage. 
Wbat ma}^ we assume to have been the value of its 
fee-simple ? Malone, who allows the total fortune of 
Mary Arden to have been £110 13s. 4d., is sure that 
the value of Asbies could not have been more than one 
hundred pounds. But why ? Because, says he, the 
' average ' rent of land at that time was no more than 
three shillings per acre. This we deny ; but upon 
(hat assumption, the total yearly rent of fifty-six acres 
would be exactly eight guineas.'^ And therefore, in 
assigning the value of Asbies at one hundred pounds, 
it appears that Malone must have estimated the land 
at no more than twelve years' purchase, which would 
carry the value to £100 16s. ' Even at this estimate,' 
as the latest annotator '^ on this subject justly ob- 
serves, ' Mary Arden's portion was a larger one than 
was usually given to a landed gentleman's daughter.' 
But this writer objects to Malone's principle of valua- 
tion. ' We find,' says he, ' that John Shakspeare also 
farmed the meadow of Tugton, containing sixteen acres, 
at the Tate of eleven shillings per acre. Now what 
proof has Mr. Malone adduced, that the acres of 
Asbies were not as valuable as those of Tugton ? 
And if they were so, the former estate must have been 
worth between three and four hundred pounds.' In 
the main drift of his objections we concur with Mr. 
Campbell. But as they are liable to some criticism, 
let UH clear the ground of all plausible cavils, and then 
see what will be the result. Malone, had he been 
aliv^, would probably have answered that Tugton waa 
a farm especially privileged by nature ; and that if 
pry man contended for so unusual a rent as eleven 



SHAKSPEABE. 37 

snillings an acre for land not known to him, tbe amis 
■prohandi would lie upon him. Be it so ; eleven shil- 
lings is certainly above the ordinary level of rent, but 
three shillings is below it. Wo contend, that foi 
tolerably good land, situated advantageously, that is, 
with a ready access to good markets and good fairs, 
such as those of Coventry, Birmingham, Gloucester, 
"Worcester, Shrewsbury, &c., one noble might be 
assumed as the annual rent ; and that in such situa- 
tions twenty years' purcha^Je was not a valuation, even 
in Elizabeth's reign, very unusual. Let us, however, 
assume the rent at only five shillings, and land at 
sixteen years' purchase. Upon this basis, the rent 
would be £14, and the value of the fee-simple £224. 
Now, if it were required to equate that sum with its 
present value, a very operose '^ calculation might be 
requisite. But contenting ourselves with the grosa 
method of making such equations between 1560 and 
the current century, that is, multiplying by five, Ave 
shall find the capital value of the estate to be eleven 
hundred and twenty pounds, whilst the annual rent 
would be exactly seventy. But if the estate had been 
sold, and the purchase-money lent upon mortgage, 
(the only safe mode of investing money at that time,) 
the annual interest would have reached £28, equal to 
£140 of modern money; for mortgages in Elizabeth's 
ag3 readily produced ten per cent. 

A woman who should bring at this day an annual 
income of £140 to a provincial tradesman, living in a 
sort of rus in urhe, according to the simple fashions of 
rustic life, Avould assuredly be considered as an excel- 
lent match. And there can be little doubt that Mary 
Arden's dowry it was which, for some ten or a dozen 



38 SHAKSrEARE. 

years succeeding to his marriage, raised her husband 
to so much social consideration in Stratford. In 1550 
John Shakspeare is supposed to have first settled in 
Stratford, having migrated from some other part of 
Warwickshire. In 1557 he married Mary Arden ; 
in 1565, the year subsequent to the birth of his sou 
William, his third child, he was elected one of the 
aldermen; and in the year 1568 he became first mag- 
istrate of the town, by the title of high bailiff". This 
year we may assume to have been that in which the 
prosperity of this family reached its zenith ; for in this 
year it was, over and above the presumptions furnished 
by his civic honors, that he obtained a grant of arms 
from Clarencieux of the Heralds' College. On this 
occasion he declared himself worth five hundred 
pounds derived from his ancestors. And we really 
cannot understand the right by which critics, living 
nearly three centuries from his time, undertake to 
Know his affairs better than himself, and to tax him 
with either inaccuracy or falsehood. No man would 
be at leisure to court heraldic honors, when he knew 
nimself to be embarrassed, or apprehended that he 
soon might be so. A man whose anxieties had been 
fixed at all upon his daily livelihood would, by this 
chase after the aerial honors of heraldry, have made 
himself a butt for ridicule, such as no fortitude could 
enable him to sustain. 

In 1568, therefore, when his son William would be 
moving through his fifth year, John Shakspeare, (now 
honored by the designation of Master,) would be found 
at times in the society of the neighboring gentry. 
Ten years in advance of this period he was already in 
difficulties. But there is no proof that these difficulties 



SHAKSPEARE. 39 

had tlion reached a point of degradation, or of memo- 
rable distress. The sole positive indications of his 
decaying condition are, that in 1578 he received an 
exemption from the small weekly assessment levied 
upon the aldermen of Stratijrd for the relief of the 
poor ; and that in the following year, 1579, he is found 
enrolled amongst the defaulters in the payment of 
taxes. The latter fact undoubtedly goes to prove that, 
like every man who is falling back in the world, he 
was occasionally in arrears. Paying taxes is not like 
the honors awarded or the possessions regulated by 
the Clarencieux ; no man is ambitious of precedency 
there ; and if a laggard pace in that duty is to be 
received as evidence of pauperism, nine tenths of the 
English people might occasionally be classed as pau- 
pers. With respect to his liberation from the weekly 
assessment, that may bear a construction different from 
the one which it has received. This payment, which 
could never have been regarded as a burden, not 
amounting to five pounds annually of our present 
money, may have been held up as an exponent of 
wealth and consideration ; and John Shakspeare may 
have been required to resign it as an honorable distinc- 
tion, not suitable to the circumstances of an embar- 
rassed man. Finally, the fact of his being indebted 
to Robert Sadler, a baker, in the sum of five pounds, 
and his being under the necessity of bringing a friend 
as security for the payment, proves nothing at all. 
There is not a town in Europe, in which opulent men 
cannot be found that are backward in the payment 
of their debts. And the probability is, that Mast-?] 
Sadler acted like most people who, when they sup- 
pose a man to be going down in the world, fpo] fbeij 



40 SHAKSPEAEE. 

res^ „'ct for tim sensibly decaying, and think it wise to 
tran.ple him under foot, provided only in that act of 
trampling they can squeeze out of him their own indi- 
vidual debt. Like that terrific chorus in Spohr's 
oratorio of St. Paul, ' Stone him to death,' is the cry 
of the selfish and the illiberal amongst creditors, alike 
towards the just and the unjust amongst debtors. 

It M as the wise and beautiful prayer of Agar, ' Give 
me neither poverty nor riches ; ' and, doubtless, for 
quiet, for peace, and the latentis semita vitce, that ia 
the happiest dispensation. But, perhaps, with a view 
to a school of discipline and of moral fortitude, it might 
be a mo/e salutary prayer, ' Give me riches and pov- 
erty, ai.d afterwards neither.' For the transitorial 
state bovween riches and poverty will teach a lesson 
both as to the baseness and the goodness of human 
nature, i nd will impress that lesson with a searching 
force, siich as no borrowed experience ever can ap- 
proach. Most probable it is that Shakspeare drew 
some of his powerful scenes in the Timon of Athens, 
those which exhibit the vileness of ingratitude and the 
impassioned frenzy of misanthropy, from his personal 
recollections connected with the case of his own father. 
Possibly, though a cloud of two hundred and seventy 
years now veils it, this very Master Sadler, who was 
so urgent for his five pounds, and who so little appre- 
hended that he should be called over tbe coals for it in 
the Encyclopaedia Britannica, may have sate for the 
portrait of that Lucullus who says of Timon : 

' Aftis, good lord ! a noble gentleman 
tis, if he would not keep so good a house. Many a time and 
jften I have dined with him, and told him on't; and come agaiq 
io supper to him, of purpose to have him spend less; and yet ha 



SHAKSPEAKE. 41 

woul.l embrace no counsel, toko no warning by my coming. 
Kvcry man has his foult, and ))onesty is his; I h<ave told him 
on't; but could never get him from it.' 

For certain years, perhaps, John Shakspeare moved 
on in darkness and sorrow : 

' His familiars from his buried fortunes 
Slunk all away; left their false vows with him. 
Like empty purses pick'd; and his poor self, 
A dedicated beggar to the air, 
With his disease of all shunn'd poverty, 
Walk'd, like contempt, alone.' 

We, however, at this day, are chiefly interested in 
the case as it bears ujDon the education and youthful 
happiness of the poet. Now if we suppose that from 
15G8, the high noon of the family prosperity, to 1578, 
the first year of their mature embarrassments, one half 
the interval was passed in stationary sunshine, and the 
latter half in the gradual twilight of declension, it will 
follow that the young "William had completed his tenth 
year before he heard the first signals of distress ; and 
for so long a period his education would probably be 
conducted on as liberal a scale as the resources of 
Stratford would allow. Through this earliest section 
of his life he would undoubtedly rank as a gentleman's 
son, possibly as the leader of his class, in Stratford. 
But what rank he held through the next ten years, or, 
more generally, what was the standing in society of 
Shakspeare until he had created a new station for 
himself by his own exertions in the metropolis, is a 
question yet unsettled, but which has been debated as 
keenly as if it had some great dependencies. Upon 
this we shall observe, that could we by possibility be 
called to settle beforehand what rank were Irest foi 



42 SHAKSPEARE. 

favoring the development of intellectual powers, the 
question might wear a face of deep practical impor- 
tance ; but when the question is simply as to a matter 
of fact, what was the rank held by a man whose intel- 
lectual development has long ago been completed, this 
becomes a mere question of curiosity. The tree hao 
fallen ; it is confessedly the noblest of all the forest ; 
and we must therefore conclude that the soil in which 
it flourished was either the best possible, or, if not so, 
that anything bad in its properties had been disarmed 
and neutralized by the vital forces of the plant, or by 
the benignity of nature. If any future Shakspeare 
were likely to arise, it might be a problem of great 
interest to agitate, whether the condition of a poor man 
or of a gentleman were best fitted to nurse and stimu- 
late his faculties. But for the actual Shakspeare, since 
Avhat he was he was, and since nothing greater can be 
imagined, it is now become a matter of little moment 
whether his course lay for fifteen or twenty years 
through the humilities of absolute poverty, or through 
the chequered paths of gentry lying in the shade. 
Whatever xoas, must, in this case at least, have been 
the best, since it terminated in producing Shakspeare ; 
and thus far we must all be optimists. 

Yet still, it will be urged, the curiosity is not illib- 
eral which Avould seek to ascertain the precise career 
through which Shakspeare ran. This we readily con- 
cede ; and we are anxious ourselves to contribute any- 
thing in our power to the settlement of a point so 
obscure. What we have wished to protest against, is 
the spirit of partisanship in which this question has too 
generally been discussed. For, whilst some with a 
fcolish affectation of plebeian sympathies overwhelm ub 



SHAKSPEAEE. 43 

\\ith the insipid commonplaces about birth and anci(;nt 
descent, as honors containing nothing meritorious, and 
rush cagerl)' into an ostentatious exhibition of all the 
circumstances which favor the notion of a himible 
station and humble connections ; others, with equal for- 
getfulucss of true dignity, plead with the intemperance 
and partiality of a legal advocate for the pretensions 
of Shalvspeare to the hereditary rank of gentleman. 
Both parties violate the majesty of the subject. When 
we are seeking for the sources of the Euphrates or the 
St. Lawrence, Ave look for no proportions to the mighty 
volume of waters in that particular summit amongst 
the chain of mountains which embosoms its earliest 
fountains, nor are we shocked at the obscurity of these 
fountains. Pursuing the career of Mahommed, or of 
any man who has memorably impressed his own mind 
or agency upon the revolutions of mankind, we feel 
solicitude about the circumstances which might sur- 
round his cradle to be altogether unseasonable and 
impertinent. Whether he were born in a hovel or a 
palace, whether he passed his infancy in squalid pov- 
erty, or hedged around by the glittering spears of body- 
guards, as mere questions of fact may be interesting ; 
but, in the light of either accessories or counter-agen- 
cies to the native majesty of the subject, are trivial and 
below all philosophic valuation. So with regard to the 
creator of Lear and Hamlet, of Othello and Macbeth ; 
to him from whose golden urns the nations beyond the 
far Atlantic, the multitude of the isles, and the genera- 
tions unborn in Australian climes, even to the realms of 
the rising sun (the aiaTuXai i^fXioio,"^ must in every age 
draw perennial streams of intellectual life, we feei 
that the little accidents of birth and social conditi.^u 



44 SHAKSPEAKE. 

are so imspeakably below the grandeur of the theme, 
are so irrelevant and disproportioned to the real interest 
at issue, so incommensurable with any of its relations, 
that a biographer of Shakspcare at once denounces 
himself as below his subject, if he can entertain such a 
question as seriously affecting the glory of the poet 
In some legends of saints, we find that they were born 
with a lambent circle or golden aureola about their 
heads. This angelic coronet shed light alike upon the 
chambers of a cottage or a palace, upon the gloomy 
limits of a dungeon, or the vast expansion of a 
cathedral ; but the cottage, the palace, the dungeon, 
the cathedral, were all equally incapable of adding one 
ray of color or one pencil of light to the supernatural 
haio. 

Having, therefore, thus pointedly guarded ourselves 
from misconstruction, and consenting to entertain the 
question as one in which we, the worshippers of 
Shakspeare, have an interest of curiosity, but in 
which he, the object of our worship, has no interest of 
glory, we proceed to state what appears to us the re- 
sult of the scanty facts surviving when collated with 
each other. 

By his mother's side, Shakspeare Avas an authentic 
gentleman. By his father's he would have stood in a 
more dubious position : but the effect of municipal 
honors to raise and illustrate an equivocal rank, has 
always been acknowledged under the popular tenden- 
cies of our English political system. From the sort of 
lead, therefore, which John Shakspeare took at one 
time amongst his fellow-townsmen, and from his rank 
of first magistrate, we may presume that, about the 
year 1568, he had placed himself at the head of the 



SHAKSPEARE. 45 

Stratford community. Afterwards lie continued for 
some years to descend from this altitude ; and tlie 
question is, at what point this gradual degradation may 
be supposed to have settled. Now we shall avow it as 
our opinion, that the composition of society in Stratford 
Was such that, even had the Shakspoare family main- 
tained their superiority, the main body of their daily 
associates must still have been found amongst persons 
bclnv the rank of gentry. The poet must inevitably 
have mixed chiefly with mechanics and humble trades- 
men, for such people composed perhaps the »^total 
community. But had there even been a gentry in 
Stratford, since they would have marked the distinc- 
tions of their rank chiefly by greater reserve of man- 
ners, it is probable that, after all, Shakspeare, with hia 
enormity of delight in exhibitions of human nature, 
would have mostly cultivated that class of society in 
which the feelings are more elementary and simple, in 
which the thoughts speak a plainer language, and in 
■which the restraints of factitious or conventional de- 
corum are exchanged for the restraints of mere sexual 
decency. It is a noticeable fact to all who have looked 
upon human life with an eye of strict attention, that 
the abstract image of womanhood, in its loveliness, its 
delicacy, and its modesty, nowhere makes itself more 
impressive or more advantageously ' felt than in the 
humblest cottages, because it is there brought into im- 
mediate juxtajiosition with the grossness of manners, 
and the careless license of language incident to the 
fathers and brothers of the house. And this is more 
especially true in a nation of unaffected sexual gal- 
lantry,''* such as the English and the Gothic races in 
general : since, under the immunity which their women 



46, SHAK.SPEARE. 

enjoy from all servile labors of a coarse or out-of-doors 
order, by as mucli lower as tbey descend in the scale 
of rank, by so mucb more do tbey benefit under the 
force of contrast with, the men of their own level. A 
young man of that class, however noble in appearance, 
is somewhat degraded in the eyes of women, by the 
necessity which his indigence imposes of working under 
a master ; but a beautiful young woman, in the very 
poorest family, unless she enters upon a life of domestic 
servitude, (in which case her labors are light, suited to 
her sex, and withdrawn from the public eye,) so long 
in fact as she stays under her father's roof, is as per- 
fectly her own mistress and sui juris as the daughter 
of an earl. This personal dignity, brought into stronger 
relief by the mercenary employments of her male con- 
nections, and the feminine gentleness of her voice and 
manners, exhibited under the same advantages of con- 
trast, oftentimes combine to make a young cottage beauty 
as fascinating an object as any woman of any station. 

Hence we may in part account for the great event of 
Shakspeare's early manhood, his premature marriage. 
It has always been known, or at least traditionally- 
received for a fact, that Shakspeare had married whilst 
3^et a boy, and that his wife was unaccountably older 
than himself. In the very earliest biographical sketch 
of the poet, compiled by Rowe, from materials col- 
lected by Betterton, the actor, it was stated, (and that 
8tat?ment is now ascertained to have been correct,) 
that: he had married Anne Hathaway, 'the daughter of 
a substantial yeoman.' Further than this nothing was 
known. But in September, 1836, was published a 
very remarkable document, which gives the assurance 
of law to the time and fact of this event, yet stilly 



SHAKSPEAKE. 47 

unless collated with another record, does nothing to 
lessen the mystery which had previoxisly surrounded its 
circumstances. This document consists of two jiarts ; 
the first, and principal, according to the logic of the 
case, though second according to the arrangement, 
being a license for the marriage of William Shakspeare 
with Anne Hathaway, under the condition ' of once 
asking of the bannes of matrimony,' that is, in effect, 
dispensing with two out of the three customary ask- 
ings ; the second or subordinate part of the document 
being a hond entered into by two sureties, viz. : Fulke 
Sandells and John Rychardson, both described as 
agricoJce or yeomen, and both marksmen, (that is, 
incapable of writing, and therefore subscribing by 
means of marks,) for the payment of forty pounds 
sterling, in the event of Shakspeare, yet a minor, and 
incapable of binding himself, failing to fulfil the con- 
ditions of the license. In the bond, drawn up in Latin, 
there is no mention of Shakspeare's name ; but in the 
license, which is altogether English, his name, of 
course, stands foremost ; and, as it may gratify the 
reader to see the veiy words and orthography of the 
original, we here extract the operative part of this 
document, prefacing only that the license is attached 
by way of explanation to the bond. ' The condition 
of this obligation is suche, that if hereafter there shall 
not appere any lawfull lett or impediment, by reason of 
any precontract, &c., but that Willm. Shagspere, one 
thone ptie,' [on the one party,] ' and Anne Hathwey 
of Stratford, in the diocess of Worcester, maiden, may 
lawfully solemnize matrimony together ; and in the 
same afterwards remaine and continew like man and 
wifFn. And, moreover, if the said Willm, Shagspere 



48 SHAKSPEAKE. 

do not proceed to solemnization of mai'iadg witli the 
said Anne Hatliwcy, without the consent of hir frinds; 
— then the said obligation ' [viz., to pay forty pounds] 
' to be voyd and of none effect, or els to stand & abide 
in fall force and vertue.' 

What are we to think of this document ? Trepida- 
tion and anxiety are written upon its face. The 
parties are not to be married by a special license ; not 
even by an ordinary license ; in that case no proclama- 
tion of banns, no public asking at all, would have been 
requisite. Economical scruples are consulted ; and 
yet the regular movement of the marriage ' through 
the bell-ropes ' '^ is disturbed. Economy, which re- 
tards the marriage, is here evidently in collision with 
some opposite principle which precipitates it. How is 
all this to be explained ? Much light is afforded by the 
date when illustrated by another document. The bond 
bears date on the 28th day of November, in the 25th 
year of our lady the queen, that is, in 1582. No\v 
the baptism of Shakspeare's eldest child, Susanna, is 
registered on the 26th of May in the year following. 
Suppose, therefore, that his marriage was solemnized 
on the 1st day of December; it was barely possible 
that it could be earlier, considering that the sureties, 
drinking, perhaps, at Worcester throughout the 28th 
of November, would require the 29th, in so dreary a 
season, for their return to Stratford ; after which some 
preparation might be requisite to the bride, since the 
marriage was not celebrated at Stratford. Next sup- 
pose the birth of Miss Susanna to have occurred, like 
her father's, two days before her baptism, viz., on the 
24th of May. From December the 1st to May the 
24th, both days inclusively, are one hundred and 



SIIAKSPEAUE. 49 

Beventy-five days ; whicli, divided by seven, gives 
precisely twenty-five weeks, that is to say, six months 
short by one week. Oh, fie, Miss Susanna, you came 
rather before you were wanted. . 

Mr. Campbell's comment upon the affair is, that ' if 
this was the case,' viz., if the baptism were really 
solemnized on the 2Gth of May, ' the poet's first child 
■would appear to have been born only six months and 
eleven days after the bond was entered into.' And 
he then concludes that, on this assumjjtion, ' Miss 
Susanna Shakspcare came into the world a little pre- 
maturely.' But this is to doubt where there never was 
Any ground for doubting ; the baptism was certainly on 
the 26th of May ; and, in the next place, the calcula- 
tion of six months and eleven days is sustained by 
substituting lunar months for calendar, and then only 
by supposing the marriage to have been celebrated on 
tho very day of subscribing the bond in Worcester, 
and the baptism to have been coincident with the 
birth ; of which suppositions the latter is improbable, 
and the former, considering the situation of Worcester, 
impossible. 

Strange it is, that, whilst all biographers have 
worked with so much zeal upon the most barren dates 
or most baseless traditions in the great poet's life, 
realizing in a manner the chimeras of Laputa, and 
endeavoring ' to extract sunbeams from cucumbers,' 
such a story with regard to such an event, no fiction 
of village scandal, but involved in legal documents, a 
story so significant and so eloquent to the intelligent, 
should formerly have been dismissed without notice of 
any kind, and even now, after the discovery of 1836, 
with nothing beyond a slight conjectural insinuation. 
6 



50 SHA.KSPEAKE. 

For our parts, we should have been the last amongst 
the biographers to unearth any forgotten scandal, or 
after so vast a lapse of time, and when the grave had 
shut out all but charitable thoughts, to point any moral 
censures at a simple case of natural frality, youthful 
precipitancy of passion, of all trespasses the most 
venial, where the final intentions are honorable. But 
in this case there seems to have been something moie 
in motion than passion or the ardor of youth. ' I like 
not,' says Parson Evans, (alluding to FalstafF in mas- 
querade,) ' I like not when a woman has a great peard ; 
I spy a great peard under her muffler.' Neither do 
we like the spectacle of a mature young woman, five 
years past her majority, wearing the semblance of 
having been led astray by a boy who had still two years 
and a half to run of his minority. Shakspeare him- 
self, looking back on this part of his youthful history 
from his maturest years, breathes forth pathetic coun- 
sels against the errors into which his own inexperience 
had been insnared. The disparity of years between 
himself and his wife he notices in a beautiful scene of 
the Twelfth Night. The Duke, Orsino, observing the 
sensibility which the pretended Cesario had betrayed 
on hearing some toviching old snatches of a love strain, 
swears that his beardless page must have felt the pas- 
sion of love, which the other admits. Upon this the 
dia ogue proceeds thus : 

* Duke. What kind of woman is't ? 
Viola. Of your complexion. 

D'lke. She is not worth thee then. What years ? 
Viola. I' faith. 

About your years, my lord. 
Dake. Too old, by heaven. Let still the woman take 

An elder than herself: so wears she to him. 



SHAKSPEARE. 51 

So sivays she level in her hjisband^s heart. 
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves. 
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm. 
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won, 
Than women's are. 

Viola. I think it well, my lord. 

Duke. Then M thy love be younqer than thyself. 
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent; 
For women are as roses, whose fair flower, 
Being once display'd, doth fall th«t very hour.' 

These counsels were uttered nearly twenty years 
after the event in his own life, to which they probably 
look back ; for this play is supposed to have been 
written in Shakspcare's thirty-eighth year. And we 
may read an earnestness in pressing the point as to 
the inrer'ed disparity of years, which indicates pretty 
clearly an appeal to the lessons of his personal experi- 
ence. But his other indiscretion, in having yielded so 
far to passion and opportunity as to crop by preliba- 
tion, and before they were hallowed, those flowers of 
paradise which belonged to his marriage day ; this he 
adverts to with even more solemnity of sorrow, and 
with more pointed energy of moral reproof, in the 
very last drama which is supposed to have proceeded 
from his pen, and therefore with the force and sanctity 
of testamentary counsel. The Tempest is all but 
ascertained to have been composed in 1611, that is, 
about five years before the poet's death ; and indeed 
could not have been composed much earlier ; for the 
very incident which suggested the basis of the plot, 
and of the local scene, viz., the shipwreck of Sir 
George Somers on the Bermudas, (which were in con- 
sequence denominated the Somers' Islands,) did not 
occur until the year 1609. In the opening of the 



52 SHAKSPEAXIE. 

fourth act, Prospero formally betrotlis his daughter to 
Ferdinand ; and in doing so he pays the prince a well- 
merited compliment of having 'worthily purchas'd' 
this rich jewel, by the patience with which, for hei 
sake, he had supported harsh visage, and other pjiiaful 
circumstances of his trial. But, he adds solemnly, 

' If thou dost break her virgin knot before 
All sanctimonious ceremonies may 
With full and holy rite be ministered ; 

in that case what would follow ? 

' No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall, 
To make this contract grow; but barren hate, 
Sour-ey''d disdain and discord, shall bestrew 
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly 
That you shall hate it both. Therefore take heed, 
As Hymen's lamps shall light you.' 

The young prince assures him in reply, that no 
strength of opportunity, concurring with the uttermost 
temptation, not 

• the murkiest den, 

The most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion 
Our worser genius can ,' 

should ever prevail to lay asleep his jealousy of self- 
control, so as to take any advantage of Miranda's 
innocence. And he adds an argument for this absti- 
nence, by way of reminding Prospero, that not honor 
only, but even prudential care of his own happiness, is 
interested in the observance of his promise. Any 
unhallowed anticipation would, as he insinuates, 

• take away 
The edge of that day's celebration, 

When I shall think, or Phoebus' steeds are founder "d. 
Or night kept chain'd below ; ' 

that is. when even the winged hours would seem to 



SHAKSPEAEE. 53 

move too slowly. Even tlius Prospcro is not quite 
satisfied. During his subsequent dialogue with jXriel, 
we are to suppose that Ferdinand, in conversing apart 
with Miranda, betrays more impassioned ardor than 
the wise magician altogether approves. The prince's 
cjiresses have not been unobserved ; and thus Prospcro 
rencM s his warning : 

' Look thou be true : do not give dalliance 
Too much the rein : the strongest oaths are sti'aw 
To the fire i' the blood : be more abstemious, 
Or else — good night your yow. ' 

The royal lover reassures him of his loyalty to his 
engagements ; and again the wise father, so honorably 
jealous for his daughter, professes himself satisfied 
with the prince's pledges. 

Now in all these emphatic warnings, uttering the 
language ' of that sad wisdom folly leaves behind,' 
who can avoid reading, as in subtle hieroglyphics, the 
secret record of Shakspeare's own nuptial disappoint- 
ments ? We, indeed, that is, universal posterity 
through every age, have reason to rejoice in these dis- 
appointments ; for, to them, past all doubt, we are 
indebted for Shakspeare's subsequent migration to 
London, and his public occupation, which, giving him 
a deep pecuniary interest in the productions of his pen, 
such as no other literary application of his powers 
could have approached in that day, were eventually the 
means of drawing forth those divine works which have 
survived their author for our everlasting benefit. 

Our own reading and deciphering of the whole case 
is as follows. The Shakspeares were a handsome 
family, both father and sons. This Tre assume upon 
the following grounds : First, on the presumption 



54 SHAKSPEAEE. 

arising out of Jolin Shakspeare's having won the favoi 
of a young heiress in higher rank than himself; 
socondly, on the presumption involved in the fact of 
three amongst his four sons, having gone upon the 
stage, to which the most ohvious (and perhaps in those 
days a sine qua nori) recommendation would be a good 
person and a pleasing countenance ; thirdly, on the 
direct evidence of Aubrey, who assures us that Wil- 
liam Shakspeare was a handsome and a well-shaped 
man ; fourthly, on the implicit evidence of the Strat- 
ford monument, which exhibits a man of good figure 
and noble countenance ; fifthly, on the confirmation of 
this evidence by the Chandos portrait, which exhibiis 
noble features, illustrated by the utmost sweetness of 
expression ; sixthly, on the selection of theatrical parts, 
which it is known that Shakspeare personated, most of 
them being such as required some dignity of form, viz., 
kings, the athletic (though aged) follower of an ath- 
letic yjung man, and supernatural beings. On these 
grounds, direct or circumstantial, we believe ourselves 
warranted in assuming that William Shakspeare was a 
handsome and even noble looking boy. Miss Anne 
Hathaway had herself probably some personal attrac- 
tions ; and, if an indigent girl, who looked for no 
pecuniary advantages, would probably have been early 
sought in marriage. But as the daughter of ' a sub- 
stantial yeoman,' Avho would expect some fortune in 
his daughter's suitors, she had, to speak coarsely, a 
little outlived her market. Time she had none to lose. 
William Shakspeare pleased her eye ; and the gentle- 
ness of his nature made him an apt subject for female 
blandishments, possibly for female arts. Withoiit 
'mputing, however, to this Anne Hathaway any thing 



SHA.KSPEAT1E. 55 

BO hateful as a settled plot for insnaring him, it waa 
easy eaougli for a mature woman, armed with such 
inevitable advantages of experience and of self-posses- 
sion, to draw onward a blushing novice ; and, without 
directly creating opportunities, to place him in the way 
of turning to account such as naturally offered. Young 
boys are generally flattered by the condescending 
notice of grown-up women ; and perhaps Shakspeare's 
own lines upon a similar situation, to a young boy 
adorned with the same natural gifts as himself, may 
give us the key to the result : 

' Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won ; 
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd ; 
And, when a woman woes, what woman's son 
AVill soui'ly leave her till he have prevail'd ? ' 

Once, indeed, entangled in such a pursuit, any person 
of manly feeling would be sensible that he had no 
retreat ; that would be — to insult a woman, grievously 
to wound her sexual pride, and to insure her lasting 
scorn and hatred. These were consequences which 
the gentle-minded Shakspeare could not face. He 
pursued his good fortunes, half perhaps in heedless- 
ness, half in desperation, until he was roused by the 
clamorous displeasure of her family upon first discov- 
ering the situation of their kinswoman. For such a 
nituation there could be but one atonement, and that 
was hurried forward by both parties : whilst, out of 
delicacy towards the bride the wedding was not cele- 
braled in Stratford, (where the register contains no 
noti-^e of such an event) ; nor, as INIalone imagined, in 
Weslon-upon-Avon, that being in the diocese of Glou- 
cester ; but in some parish, as yet undiscovered, in the 
diocese of Wi rcestcr. 



56 SHAKSPEAKE. 

But now arose a serious question as to the future 
maintenance of the young people. John Shakspeare 
was depressed in his circumstances, and he had other 
children besides "William, viz., three sons and a daugh- 
ter. The elder lives have represented him as burdened 
with ten ; but this was an error, arising out of the con- 
fusion between John Shakspeare the glover, and John 
Shakspeare a shoemaker. This error has been thus 
far of use, that, by exposing the fact of two John 
Shakspeares (not kinsmen) residing in Stratford-upon- 
Avon, it has satisfactorily proved the name to bo 
amongst those which are locally indigenous to War- 
wickshire. Meantime it is now ascertained that John 
Shakspeare the glover had only eight children, viz., 
four daughters and four sons. The order of their 
succession was this : Joan, Margaret, William, Gil- 
bert, a second Joan, Anne, Richard, and Edmund. 
Three of the daughters, viz., the two eldest of the 
family, Joan and Margaret, together with Anne, died 
in childhood. All the rest attained mature ages, and 
of these William was the eldest. This might give him 
some advantage in his father's regard ; but in a ques- 
tion of pecuniary provision, precedency amongst the 
children of an insolvent is nearly nominal. For tha 
present John Shakspeare could do little for his son ; 
and, under these circumstances, perhaps the father of 
Anne^ Hathaway would come forward to assist the new- 
married couple. This condition of dependency would 
furnish matter for painful feelings and irritating words. 
The youthful husband, whose mind would be expand- 
ing as rapidly as the leaves and blossoms of spring-time 
in polar latitudes, would soon come to appreciate the 
sort of wiles by which he had been caught. The female 



SHAKSPEAEE. 57 

mind is quick, and almost gifted with the power of 
witchcraft, to decipher what is passing in the thoughts 
of familiar companions. Silent and forbearing as Wil- 
liam Shakspcare might be, Anne, his staid wife, would 
read his secret reproaches ; ill would she dissemble 
her wrath, and the less so from the consciousness of 
having deserved them. It is no uncommon case for 
women to feel anger in connection with one subject, 
and to express it in connection mth another ; which 
other, perhaps, (except as a serviceable mask,) would 
have been a matter of indifference to their feelings. 
Anne would, therefore, reply to those inevitable re- 
proaches which her own sense must presume to be 
lurking in her husband's heart, by others equally 
stinging, on his inability to support his family, and on 
his obligations to her father's purse. Shakspeare, we 
may be sure, would be ruminating every hour on the 
means of his deliverance from so painful a depen- 
dency; and at length, after four years' conjugal dis- 
cord, he would resolve upon that plan of solitary 
emigration to the metropolis, which, at the same time 
that it released him from the humiliation of domestic 
feuds, succeeded so splendidly for his worldly pros- 
perity, and with a train of consequences so vast for all 
future ages. 

Such, we are persuaded, was the real course of 
Shakspeare's transition from school-boy pursuits to hi? 
public career. And upon the known temperament of 
Shakspeare, his genial disposition to enjoy life without 
disturbing his enjoyment by fretting anxieties, we build 
the conclusion, that had his friends furnished him with 
ampler funds, and had his marriage been well assorted 
or happy, we — the world of posterity — should have 



58 SHAKSPEAKE. 

lost the whole benefit and delight which we have since 
/ ?aped from his matchless faculties. The motives 
which drove him yrom Stratford are clear enough; but 
what motives determined his course to London, anc" 
especially to the stage, still remains to be explained 
Stratford-upon-Avon, lying in the high road from Lon- 
don through Oxford to !6irmingham, (or more generally 
to the north,) had been continually visited by some of 
the best comedians during Shakspeare's childhood. 
One or two of the most respectable metropolitan actors 
were natives of Stratford. These would be well 
known to the elder Shakspeare. But, apart from that 
accident, it is notorious that mere legal necessity and 
usage would compel all companies of actors, upon 
coming into any town, to seek, in the first place, from 
the chief magistrate, a license for opening a theatre, 
and next, over and above this public sanction, to seek 
his personal favor and patronage. As an alderman, 
therefore, but still more whilst clothed with the ofiicial 
powers of chief magistrate, the poet's father would 
have opportunities of doing essential services to many 
persons connectod with the London stage. The con- 
versation of comedians acquainted with books, fresh 
from the keen and sparkling circles of the metropolis, 
and filled with racy anecdotes of the court, as well as 
of public life generally, could not but have been fasci- 
nating, by comparison with the stagnant society of 
Stratford. Hospitalities on a liberal scale would be 
ofi"ered to these men. Not impossibly this fact might 
be one principal key to those dilapidations w^hich the 
family estate had suff"ered. These actors, on their 
part, would retain a grateful sense of the kindness they 
naa received, and would seek to repay it to John Shak- 



SHAKSPEARE. 69 

apeare, now that he was depressed in his fortunes, as 
opportunities might offer. His oldest son, growing up 
a handsome young man, and beyond all doubt from his 
earliest days of most splendid colloquial powers, (for 
assuredly of him it may be taken for granted, 

' Nee licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre,) 

would be often reproached in a friendly way for 
burying himself in a country life. These overtures, 
prompted alike by gratitude to the father, and' a real 
selfish interest in the talents of his son, would at length 
take a definite shape ; and upon some clear under- 
standing as to the terms of such an arrangement, 
William Shakspeare would at length, (about 1586, 
according to the received account, that is, in the fifth 
year of his married life, and the twenty-third or twen- 
ty-fourth of his age,) unaccompanied by wife or chil- 
dren, translate himself to London. Later than 1586 
it could not well be, for already in 1589 it has been 
recently ascertained that he held a share in the property 
of a leading theatre. 

We must here stop to notice, and the reader will 
allow us to notice with summary indignation, the 
slanderous and idle tale which represents Shakspeare 
as having fled to London in the character of a criminal, 
from the persecutions of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charle- 
cot. This tale has long been propagated under two 
separate impulses. Chiefly, perhaps, under the vulgar 
love of pointed and glaring contrasts ; the splendor of 
the man was in this instance brought into a sort of 
epigrammatic antithesis with the humility of his for- 
tunes ; secondly, under a baser impulse, the malicious 
pleasure of seeing a great man degraded. Accord* 



60 SHAKSPEAKE. 

ingly, as in the case of Milton,'' ^ it has been affirmed 
that Shakspeare had suffered corporal chastisement, in 
fact, (we abhor to utter such words,) that he had been 
judicially whipt. Now, first of all, let us mark the 
inconsistency of this tale. The poet was whipped, 
that is, he was punished most disproportionately, and 
yet he fled to avoid punishment. Next, we arc in- 
formed that his offence was deer-stealing, and from 
the park of Sir Thomas Lucy. And it has been well 
ascertained that Sir Thomas had no deer, and had no 
park. Moreover, deer-«tealing was regarded by our 
ancestors exactly as poaching is regarded by ns. Deer 
ran wild in all the great forests ; and no offence was 
looked upon as so venial, none so compatible Avith a 
noble Robin-Hood style of character, as this very 
trespass upon what were regarded as ferce naturce, and 
not at all as domestic property. But had it been other- 
wise, a trespass was not punishable with whipping ; 
nor had Sir Thomas Lucy the power to irritate a whole 
community, like Stratford-upon-Avon, by branding with 
permanent disgrace a young man so closely connected 
. with three at least of the best families in the neighbor- 
hood. Besides, had Shakspeare suffered any dishonor 
of that kind, the scandal would infallibly have pursued 
him at bis very heels to London ; and in that case 
Greene, who has left on record, in a posthumous work 
of 1592, his malicious feelings towards Shakspeare, 
could not have failed to notice it. For, be it remem- 
bered, that a judicial flagellation contains a twofold 
ignominy. Flagellation is ignominious in its own na- 
ture, even though unjustly inflicted, arid by a ruffian ; 
econdly, any judicial punishment is ignominious, even 
tftough not wearing a shade of personal degradation. 



SHAKSPEAKE. 61 

Now a judicial flagellation include? both feat ares of 
dishonor. And is it to be imagired tha; an enemy , 
searching with the diligence of malice for matter 
against Shakspcare, should have failed, six years after 
the event, to hear of that very memorable disgrace 
which had exiled him from Stmtford, and was the very 
occasion of his first resorting to London ; or that a 
leading company of players in the metropolis, one of 
whom, and a chief one, was his own townsman, should 
cheerfully adopt into their society, as an honored 
partner, a young man yet flagrant from the lash of thu 
executioner or the beadle ? 

This tale is fabulous, and rotten to its core ; yet 
even this does less dishonor to Sbakspeare's memory 
than the sequel attached to it. A sort of scurrilous 
rondeau, consisting of nine lines, so lopthsome in its 
brutal stupidity, and so vulgar in its exp'-ession, that 
we shall not pollute our pagee by transcribing it, has 
been imputed to Shakspeare ever since the days of the 
credulous Rowe. The total point of this idiot's drivel 
consists in calling Sir Thomas ' an asse ; ' and well it 
justifies the poet's own remark, 'Let there be gall 
enough in thy ink, no matter though thou WTite with a 
goose-pen.' Our own belief is, that these lines were 
a production of Charles II. 's reign, and applied to a 
Sir Thomas Lucy, not very far removed, if at all, fron^ 
the age of him who first picked up the precious filth. 
The phrase ' parliament meraher,' we believe to b« 
qtrite unknown in the colloquial use of Queen Eliza 
beth's reign. 

' But, that we may rid ourselves once and for ever 
of this outrageous calumny upon Sbakspeare's memory, 
we shall j'ursue the story to its final stage. Evea 



62 SHAKSPEARE. 

Malone lias been tboviglitless enough to accredit tliis 
closing chapter, wliicb contains, in fact, such a super- 
fetation of folly as the annals of human dulness do not 
exceed. Let us recapitulate the points of the story. 
A baronet, who has no deer and no park, is supposed 
to persecute a poet for stealing these aerial deer out of 
tliis aerial park, both lying in nephelococcygia. The 
poet sleeps upon this wrong for eighteen years ; but at 
length, hearing that his persecutor is dead and buried, 
he conceives bloody thoughts of revenge. And this 
revenge he purposes to execute by picking a hole in 
his dead enemy's coat-of-arms. Is this coat-of-arms, 
then, Sir Thomas Lucy's ? Why, no ; Malone admits 
that it is not. For the poet, suddenly recollecting that 
this ridicule would settle upon the son of his enemy, 
selects another coat-of-arms, w^ith which his dead 
enemy never had any connection, and he spends his 
thunder and lightning u|)on this irrelevant object ; and, 
after all, the ridicule itself lies in a Welshman's mis- 
pronouncing one single heraldic term — a Welshman 
who mispronounces all words. The last act of the 
poet's malice recalls to us a sort of jest-book story of 
an Irishman, the vulgarity of which the reader will 
pardon in consideration of its relevancy. The Irish- 
man having lost a pair of silk stockings, mentions to a 
friend that he has taken steps for recovering them by 
an advertisement, offering a rew^ard to the finder. His 
friend objects that the costs of advertising, and the 
reward, would eat out the full A'alue of the silk stock- 
ings. But to this the Irishman replies, with a knowing 
air, that he is not so green as to have overlooked that ; 
End that, to keep down the reward, he had advertised 
the stockings as worsted. Not at all less flagrant is the 



SHAKSrEAKE. 63 

bull ascribed to Shakspearc, wlicn be is made to punish 
a dead man by personalities meant for bis exclusive 
ear, tbrougb his coat-of-arms, but at the same time, 
with the express purpose of blunting and defeating the 
edge of his own scurrility, is made to substitute for the 
real arms some others which had no more relation to 
the dead enemy than they had to the poet himself. 
This is the very sublime of folly, beyond which human 
dotage cannot advance. 

It is painful, indeed, and dishonorable to human 
nature, that whenever men of vulgar habits and of 
poor education wish to impress us with a feeling of 
resjiect for a man's talent, they are sure to cite, by 
way of evidence, some gross instance of malignity. 
Power, in their minds, is best illustrated by malice or 
by the infliction of pain. To this unwelcome fact we 
have some evidence in the wretched tale which we 
have just dismissed; and there is another of the same 
description to be found in all lives of Shakspeare, 
which we will expose to the contempt of the reader 
whilst we are in this field of discussion, that we may 
not afterwards have to resume so disgusting a subject. 

This poet, who was a model of gracious benignity 
in his manners, and of whom, amidst our general igno- 
rance, thus much is perfectly established, that the 
term gentle v/as almost as generally and by prescrip- 
tive right associated with his name as the affix of 
venerahle Avith Bede, or judicious with Hooker, is 
alleged to have insulted a friend by an imaginary 
epitaph beginning ' Ten in the Hundred,' and suppos- 
ing him to be damned, yet without wit enough (A\hich 
surely the Stratford bellman could have furnished) foi 
devising any, even fanciful, reason for such a supposi- 



84 SHAKSPEAKE. 

tion ; upon whicli the comment of some foolish critic 
is, ' The sharpness of the satire is said to have stung 
the man so much that he never forgave it.' We have 
heard of the sting in tire tail atoning for the brainless 
head ; but in this doggerel the tail is surely as sting- 
less as the head is brainless. For, \st. Ten in the 
hundred could be no reproach in Shakspeare's time, 
any more than to call a man Three-and-a-haJf-per-cent. 
in this present year, 1838 ; except, indeed, amongst 
those foolish persons who built their morality ujjon 
the Jewish ceremonial law. Shakspeare himself took 
ten per cent. 2dly. It happens that John Combe, so 
far from being the object of the poet's scurrility, or 
viewing the poet as an object of implacable resentment, 
was a Stratford friend ; that one of his family Avas 
affectionately remembered in Shakspeare's will by the 
bequest of his sword ; and that John Combe himself 
recorded his perfect charity with Shakspeare by leaving 
hira a legacy of £5 sterling. And in this lies the 
kej to the whole story. For, 3dly, The four lines 
were written and printed before Shakspeare was born. 
The name Combe is a common one ; and some stupid 
fellow, AAho had seen the name in Shakspeare's will, 
and happened also to have seen the lines in a collection 
of epigrams, chose to connect the cases by attribiiting 
an identity to the two John Combe's, though at war 
with chronology. 

Finall} , there is another specimen of doggerel at- 
tributed to Shakspeare, which is not equally unworthy 
of him, becavise not equally malignant, but otherwise 
equally below his intellect, no less than his scholar- 
ship ; we mean the inscription on his gravestone. 
This, as a sort of siste viator appeal to fntm ") sextons 



SHAKSPEABE. 65 

is worthy of the grave-digger or the parish- clcr'A, who 
was i)robably its author. Or it may have been an 
antique formula, like the vulgar record of ownership 
in books : — 

' Antbony Timothy Dolthead's book, 
God give him grace therein to look.' 

Thus far the matter is of little importance ; and it 
might have been supposed that malignity itself could 
hardly have imputed such trash to Shakspeare. But 
when we find, even in this short compass, scarcely 
wider than the po'sy of a ring, room found for traducing 
the poet's memory, it becomes important to say, that 
the leading sentiment, the horror expressed at any dis- 
turbance offered to his bones, is not one to which 
Shakspeare could have attached the slightest weight ; 
far less could have outraged the sanctities of place 
and subject, by affixing to any sentiment whatever 
(and, according to the fiction of the case, his farewell 
sentiment) the sanction of a curse. 

Filial veneration and piety towards the memory of 
this great man, have led us into a digression that might 
have been unseasonable in any cause less weighty than 
one, having for its object to deliver his honored name 
from a load of the most brutal malignity. Never 
more, we hope and venture to believe, will any 
thoughtless biographer impute to Shakspeare the asi- 
nine doggerel with which the uncritical blundering of 
his earliest biographer has caused his name to be di"!- 
honored. We now resume the thread of our biog- 
raphy. The stream of history is centuries in working 
itself clear of any calumny with which it has once 
been jjolluted. 



66 SHAKSPEARE. 

Most readers will be aware of an old story, accord- 
ing to wliicli Shakspeare gained his livelihood for some 
time after coming to London by holding the horses of 
those who rode to the play. This legend is as idle aa 
any one of those which we have just exposed. No 
custom ever existed of riding on horseback to the play. 
Gentlemen, who rode valuable horses, would assuredly 
not expose them systematically to the injury of stand- 
ing exposed to cold for two or even four hours ; and 
persons of inferior rank would not ride on horseback 
in the town. Besides, had such a custom ever existed, 
stables (or sheds at least) would soon have arisen to 
meet the public wants ; and in some of the dramatic 
sketches of the day, which noticed every fashion as it 
arose, this would not have been overlooked. The 
<5tory is traced originally to Sir William Davenant. 
Betterton the actor, who professed to have received it 
from him, passed it onwards to Rowe, he to Pope, 
Pope to Bishop Newton, the editor of Milton, and 
Newton to Dr. Johnson. This pedigree of the fable, 
however, adds nothing to its credit, and multiplies the 
chances of some mistake. Another fable, not much 
less absurd, represents Shakspeare as having from the 
very first been borne upon the establishment of the 
theatre, and so far contradicts the other fable, but 
originally in the very humble character of call-hoy or 
deputy prompter, whose business it was to summon 
each performer according to his order of coming upon 
the stage. This story, however, quite as much as the 
other, is irreconcilable with the discovery recently 
made by Mr. Collier, that in 1589 Shakspeare was a 
shareholder in the important property of a principal 
T-^idon theatre. It seems destined tnat all the un- 



SHAKSrEAKE. 67 

doubted facts of Shakspeare's life should come to us 
tlirougli tlie channel of legal documents, which are 
better evidence even than imperial medals ; Avhilst, on 
the other hand, all the fabulous anecdotes not having 
an attorney's seal to them, seem to have been the 
fictions of the wonder maker. The plain presumption 
from the record of Shakspeare's situation in 1589, 
coupled with the fact that his first arrival in London 
was possibly not until 1587, but according to the 
earliest account not before 1586, a space of time which 
leaves but little room for any remarkable changes of 
situation, seems to be, that, either in requital of ser- 
vices done to the players by the poet's family, or in 
consideration of money advanced by his father-in-law, 
or on account of Shakspeare's personal accomplish- 
ments as an actor, and as an adapter of dramatic 
works to the stage ; for one of these reasons, or for all 
of them united, William Shakspeare, about the 23d 
year of his age, was adopted into the partnership of a 
respectable histrionic company, possessing a first-rate 
theatre in the metropolis. If 1586 were the year in 
Avhich he came up to London, it seems probable 
enough that his immediate motive to that step was the 
increasing distress of his father ; for in that year John 
Shakspeare resigned the office of alderman. There is, 
however, a bare possibility that Shakspeare might have 
gone to London about the time when he completr d his 
twenty-first year, that is, in the spring of 1585, 1 at not 
earlier. Nearly two years after the birth of his eldest 
daughter Susanna, his wife lay in for a second and a 
last time ; but she then brought her husband twins, 
% son and a daughter. These children were baptized 
m February of the year 1585 ; so that Shakspeare's 



68 SHAKSPEAKE. 

whole family of three cMlclren were born and baptized 
two months before lie completed bis majority. Tbo 
twins were baptized by the names of Hamnet and 
Judith, those being the names of two amongst their 
sponsors, viz., Mr. Sadler and his wife. Hamnet, 
which is a remarkable name in itself, becomes still 
more so from its resemblance to the immortal name of 
Hamlet ^"^ the Dane ; it was, however, the real baptis- 
mal name of Mr. Sadler, a friend of Shakspeare's, 
about fourteen years older than himself. Shakspeare's 
son must then have been most interesting to his heart, 
both as a twin child and as his only boy. He died in 
1596, when he Avas about eleven years old. Both 
daughters survived their father ; both married ; both 
left issue, and thus gave a chance for continuing the 
succession from the great poet. But all the four 
grandchildren died without offspring. 

Of Shakspeare personally, at least of Shakspeare 
the man, as distinguished from the author, there 
remains little more to record. Already in 1592, 
Greene, in his posthumous Groat's-worth of Wit, had 
expressed the earliest vocation of Shakspeare in the 
following sentence : ' There is an upstart crow, beau- 
tified with our feathers ; in his own conceit the only 
Shakscene in a country ! ' This alludes to Shakspeare's 
office of recasting, and even recomposing, dramatic 
works, so as to fit them for representation ; and Master 
Greene, it is probable, had suffered in his self-estima- 
tion, or in his purse, by the alterations in some piece 
of his own, which the duty of Shakspeare to the gen- 
eral interest of the theatre had obliged him to make. 
In 1591 it has been supposed that Shakspeare wrotu 
bis first drama, the Two Gentlemen of Verona ; the 



SHAKSPEARE. 69 

least characteristically marked of all his plays, and, 
with the exception of Love's Labor's Lost, the least 
interesting. 

From this year, 1591, to that of 1611, are just 
twenty years, within which space lie the whole dra- 
matic creations of Shakspeare, averaging nearly one for 
every six months. In 1611 was written the Tempest, 
which is supposed to have been the last of all Shak- 
speare's works. Even on that account, as Mr. Camp- 
bell feelingly observes, it has ' a sort of sacredness ; ' 
and it is a most remarkable fact, and one calculated to 
make a man superstitious, that in this play the great 
enchanter Prospcro, in whom, ' as if conscious,'' says 
Mr. Campbell, ' that this would be his last work, the 
poet has been inspired to tTjpify himself as a wise, 
potent, and benevolent magician,'' of whom, indeed, as 
of Shakspeare himself, it may be said, that ' within 
that circle ' (the circle of his own art) ' none durst 
tread but he,' solemnly and forever renovmces his mys- 
terious functions, symbolically breaks his enchanter's 
wand*, and declares that he will bury his books, his 
science, and his secrets, 

* Deeper thau did ever plummet sound.' 

Nay, it is even ominous, that in this play, and 
from the voice of Prospero, issues that magnificent 
prophecy of the total destruction which should one day 
swallow up 

' The solemn temples, the great globe itself. 
Yea all which it inherit.' 

And this prophecy is followed immediately by a most 
profound ejaculation, gathering into one pathetic ab- 
straction the total philosophy of life : 



70 SHAKSPEAKE. 

' We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of; and our little life 
Is rounded by a sleep ; ' 

that is, in effect, our life is a little tract of feverish 
vigils, surrounded and islanded by a shoreless ocean 
of sleep — sleep before birth, sleep after death. 

These remarkable passages were probably not unde- 
signed ; but if we suppose them to have been thrown 
off without conscious notice of their tendencies, then, 
according to the superstition of the ancient Grecians, 
they would have been regarded as prefiguring words, 
prompted by the secret genius that accompanies every 
man, such as insure along with them their own accom- 
plishment. With or without intention, however, it is 
believed that Shakspeare wrote nothing more after this 
exquisite romantic drama. With respect to the re- 
mainder of his personal history. Dr. Drake and others 
have supposed, that during the twenty years from 1591 
to 1611, he visited Stratford often, and latterly once a 
year. 

In 1589 he had possessed some share in a theatre; 
in 1596 he had a considerable share. Through Lord 
Southampton, as a surviving friend of Lord Essex, who 
was viewed as the martyr to his Scottish politics, there 
can be no doubt that Shakspeare had acquired the 
favor of James I. ; and accordingly, on the 29th of 
May, 1603, about two months after the king's acces- 
sion to the throne of England, a patent was granted 
to the company of players who possessed the Globe 
theatre; in which patent Shakspeare's name stands 
second. This patent raised the company to the rank 
of his majesty's servants, whereas previously they are 
supposed to have been simply the servants of the Lord 



SllAKSPEAKE. 71 

Cliambcrlaiii. Perhaps it was in grateful acknowledg- 
ment of this royal favor that Shakspeare afterwards, in 
1 GOG, paid that sublime compliment to the house of 
Stuart, which is involved in the vision shown to Mac- 
beth. This vision is managed with exquisite skill. It 
was impossible to display the whole series of princes 
from Macbeth to James I. ; but he beholds the poster- 
ity of Banquo, one ' gold-bound brow ' succeeding to 
another, until he comes to an eighth apparition of a 
Scottish king, 

' AVlio bears a glass 
Which shows him many more; and some he sees 
Who twofold balls and treble sceptres carry; ' 

thus bringing down without tedium the long succession 
to the very person of James I., by the symbolic image 
of the two crowns united on one head. 

About the beginning of the century Shakspeare had 
become rich enough to purchase the best house in 
Stratford, called The Great House, which name he 
altered to New Place ; and in 1602 he bought one 
hundred and seven acres adjacent to this house for a 
sum (£320) corresponding to about 1500 guineas of 
modern money. Malone thinks that he purchased the 
house as early as 1597 ; and it is certain that about 
that time he was able to assist his father in obtaining a 
renewed grant of arms from the Herald's College, and 
therefore, of course, to re-establish his father's for- 
tunes. Ten years of a well-directed industry, viz., 
from 1591 to 1601, and the prosperity of the theatre 
in which he was a proprietor, had raised him to afflu- 
ence ; and after another ten years, improved with the 
same success, he was able to retire with an income of 
;f 300, or faccording to the customary computations') iw 



72 SHAKSPEARE. 

modern money of ill 500, per annum. Slmkspeare 
was in fact the first man of letters, Pope tlie second, 
and Sir Walter Scott the third, who, in Great Britain, 
has ever realized a large fortune by literature ; or in 
Christendom, if we except Voltaire, and two dubious 
cases in Italy. The four .or five latter years of his life 
Shakspeare passed in dignified ease, in profound medi- 
tation, we may be sure, and in universal respect, at his 
native town of Stratford; and thtre he died, on the 
23d of April, 161 6. '8 

His daughter Susanna had been married on the 6tn 
of June of the year 1607, to Dr. John Hall, '9 a phy- 
sician in Stratford. The doctor died in November, 
1635, aged sixty; his wife, at the age of sixty-six, on 
July 11, 1640. They had one child, a daughter, 
named Elizabeth, born in 1608, married April 22, 
1626, to Thomas Nash, Esq., left a widow in 1647, 
and subsequently remarried to Sir John Barnard ; but 
this Lady Barnard, the sole grand-daughter of the 
poet, had no children by either marriage. The other 
daughter, Judith, on February 10, 1616, (about ten 
weeks before her father's death,) married Mr. Thomas 
Quiney of Stratford, by whom she had three sons, 
Shakspeare, Richard, and Thomas. Judith was about 
thirty-one years old at the time of her marriage ; and 
living just forty-six years afterwards, she died in 
February, 1662, at the age of seventy-seven. Her 
three sons died without issue ; and thus, in the direct 
lineal descent, it is certain that no representative has 
survived of this transcendent poet, the most august 
amongst created intellects. 

After this review of Shakspeare's life, it becomes 
our duty to take a summary survey of his works, of 



SHAKSPEARE. 73 

liis intellectual powers, and of his station in literature, 
a station which is now irrevocably settled, not so much 
(which happens in other cases) by a vast overbalance 
of favorable suffrages as by acclamation ; not so much 
by the voices of those who admire him up to the verge 
of idolatry, as by the acts of those who everywhere 
seek for his works among the primal necessities of 
]ifc, demand them, and crave them as they do their 
daily bread ; not so much by eulogy openly proclaim- 
ing itself, as by the silent homage recorded in the 
endless multiplication of what he has bequeathed us ; 
not so much by his own com2)atriots, who, with regard 
to almost every other author,20 compose the total 
amount of his effective audience, as by the unanimous 
' all hail ! ' of intellectual Christendom ; finally, not 
by the hasty partisanship of his own generation, nor by 
the biassed judgment of an age trained in the same 
modes of feeling and of thinking with himself, — but by 
the solemn award of generation succeeding to genera- 
tion; of one age correcting the obliquities or peculiari- 
ties of another ; by the verdict of two hundred and 
thirty years, which have now elapsed since the very 
latest of his creations, or of two hundred and forty- 
seven years if we date from the earliest ; a verdict 
Avhich has been continually revived and re-opened, 
probed, searched, vexed by criticism in every spirit, 
from the most genial and intelligent, down to the most 
malignant and scurrilously hostile which feeble heads 
and great ignorance could suggest when cooperating 
with impure hearts and narrow sensibilities ; a verdict, 
in short, sustained and countersigned by a longer series 
of writers, many of them eminent fcr wit or learning, 
than were ever before congregated upon any inquest 
7 



74 SHAKSPEAEE. 

relating to any author, be he who he might, ancient ^1 
or modern, Pagan or Christian. It was a most witty 
saying with respect to a piratical and knavish publisher, 
who made a trade of insulting the memories of de- 
ceased authors by forged writings, that he was ' among 
the new terrors of death.' But in the gravest sense it 
may be affirmed of Shakspeare, that he is among the 
modem luxuries of life ; that life, in fact, is a new 
thing, and one more to be coveted, since Shakspeare 
has extended the domains of human consciousness, 
and pushed its dark frontiers into regions not so much 
as dimly descried or even suspected before his time, 
far less illuminated (as now they are) by beauty and 
tropical luxuriance of life. For instance, — a single 
instance, indeed one which in itself is a world of new 
revelation, — the possible beauty of the female char- 
acter had not been seen as in a dream before Shak- 
speare called into perfect life the radiant shapes of 
Desdemona, of Imogene, of Hermione, of Perdita, of 
Ophelia, of Miranda, and many others. The Una of 
Spenser, earlier by ten or fifteen years than most of 
these, was an idealized portrait of female innocence 
and virgin purity, but too shadowy and unreal for a 
dramatic reality. And as to the Grecian classics, let 
not the reader imagine for an instant that any prototj'pe 
in this field of Shakspearian power can be looked for 
there. The Antigone and the Electra of the tragic 
poets are the two leading female characters that classi- 
cal antiquity offers to our respect, but assuredly not to 
our impassioned love, as disciplined and exalted in the 
school of Shakspeare. They challenge our admiration, 
severe, and even stern, as impersonations of filial duty, 
cleaving to the steps of a desolate and afflicted old 



SHAKSPEAKE. 75 

man ; or of slsiterly affection, maintaining tlie rights of 
a brother under circumstances of peril, of desertion, 
and consequently of perfect self-reliance. Ipliigenia, 
again, though, not dramatically coming before us in her 
own person, but according to the beautiful report of a 
spectator, pi-esents us with a fine statuesque model of 
heroic fortitude, and of one whose young heart, even 
in the very agonies of her cruel immolation, refused to 
forget, by a single indecorous gesture, or so much as a 
moment's neglect of her own princely descent, and 
that she herself was ' a lady in the land.' These are 
fine marble groups, but they are not the warm breath- 
ing realities of Shakspeare ; there is ' no speculation ' 
in their cold marble eyes ; the breath of life is not in 
their nostrils ; the fine pulses of womanly sensibilities 
are not throbbing in their bosoms. And besides this 
immeasurable difference between the cold moony re- 
flexes of life, as exhibited by the power of Grecian 
art, and the true sunny life of Shakspeare, it must be 
observed that the Antigones, &c. of the antique put 
forward but one single trait of character, like the aloe 
with its single blossom. This solitary feature is pre- 
sented to us as an abstraction, and as an insulated 
quality; whereas in Shakspeare all is presented in the 
concrete ; that is to say, not brought forward in relief, 
as by some effort of an anatomical artist ; but em- 
bodied and imbedded, so to speak, as by the force of a 
creative nature, in the complex system of a human 
life ; a life in which all the elements move and play 
simultaneously, and with something more than mere 
simultaneity or co-existence, acting and re-acting each 
upon the other, nay, even acting by each other and 
through each other. In Sliakspeare's characters is felt 



76 SHAKSPEAKE. 

for ever a real organic life, where each is for the 
whole and in the Avhole, and where the whole is for 
each and in each. They only are real incarnations. 

The Greek poets could not exhibit any approxima- 
tions to female character, without violating the truth of 
Grecian life, and shocking the feelings of the audience. 
The drama with the Greeks, as with us, though much 
less than with us, was a picture of human life ; and 
that which could not occur in life could not wisely be 
exhibited on the stage. Now, in ancient Greece, 
women were secluded from the society of men. The 
conventual sequestration of the ywaixwrLrt?, or female 
apartment 22 of the house, and the Mahommedan con- 
secration of its threshold against the ingress of males, 
had been transplanted from Asia into Greece thousands 
of years perhaps before either convents or Mahommed 
existed. Thus barred from all open social intercourse, 
women could not develope or express any character by 
word or action. Even to have a character, violated, to 
a Grecian mind, the ideal portrait of feminine excel- 
lence ; Avhence, perhaps, partly the too generic, too 
little individualized, style of Grecian beauty. But 
prominently to express a character was impossible 
under the common tenor of Grecian life, unless when 
high tragical catastrophes transcended the decorums of 
that tenor, or for a brief interval raised the curtain 
which veiled it. Hence the subordinate part which 
women play upon the Greek stage in all but some haU 
dozen cases. In the paramount tragedy on that stage, 
the model tragedy, the (Edipus Tyrannus oi Sophocles, 
there is virtually no woman at all ; for Jocasta is a 
party to the story merely as the dead Laius or the se]f- 
murdered Sphinx was a party, viz., by her contriba- 



SHAKSPEAKE. 77 

aons to the fatalities of tlie event, not by anything she 
does or says spontaneously. In fact, the Greek poet, 
if a wise poet, could not address himself genially to a 
task in which he must begin by shocking the sensibili- 
ties of his countrymen. And hence followed, not only 
the dearth of female characters in the Grecian drama, 
but also a second result still more favorable to the sense 
of a new power evolved by Shakspeare. Whenever 
the common law of Grecian life did give way, it was, 
as we have observed, to the suspending force of some 
great convulsion or tragical catastrophe. This for a 
moment (like an earthquake in a nunnery) would set 
at liberty even the timid, fluttering Grecian women, 
those doves of the dove-cot, and would call some of 
them into action. But which? Precisely those of 
energetic and masculine minds ; the timid and femi- 
nine would but shrink the more from public gaze and 
from tumult. Thus it happened, that such female 
characters as were exhibited in Greece, could not but 
be the harsh and the severe. If a gentle Ismene 
appeared for a moment in contest Avith some energetic 
sister Antigone, (and, chiefly, perhaps, by way of draw- 
ing out the fiercer character of that sister,) she was 
soon dismissed as unfit for scenical efi'ect. So that not 
only were female characters few, but, moreover, of 
these few the majority were but repetitions of mascu- 
line qualities in female persons. Female agency being 
seldom summoned on the stage, except when it had 
received a sort of special dispensation from its sexual 
character, by some terrific convulsions of the house 
or the city, naturally it assumed the style of action 
suited to these circumstances. And hence it arose, 
that not woman as she difi'ered from man, but woman 



<8 SHAKSPEAKE. 

as she resembled man — woman, in short, seen under 
circumstances so dreadful as to abolish the effect of 
sexual distinction, was the woman of the Greek tra- 
gedy. 23 And hence generally arose for Shakspeare 
the wider field, and the more astonishing by its perfect 
novelty, when he first introduced female characters, 
not as mere varieties or echoes of masculine charac- 
ters, a Medea or Clytemnestra, or a vindictive Hecuba, 
the mere tigress of the tragic tiger, but female charac- 
ters that had the appropriate beauty of fem^ale nature ; 
woman no longer grand, terrific, and repulsive, but 
woman ' after her kind ' — the other hemisphere of 
the dramatic world ; woman, running through the vast 
gamut of womanly loveliness ; woman, as emancipated, 
exalted, ennobled, under a new law of Christian mo- 
rality ; woman, the sister and coequal of man, lio 
longer his slave, his prisoner, and sometimes his rebel, 
'It is a far cry to Loch Awe ; ' and from the Athe- 
nian stage to the stage of Shakspeare, it may be said, 
is a prodigious interval. True; but prodigious as it 
is, there is really nothing between them. The Roman 
stage, at least the tragic stage, as is well known, was 
put out, as by an extinguisher, by the cruel amphithe- 
atre, just as a candle is made pale and ridiculous by 
daylight. Those who were fresh from the real mur- 
ders of the bloody amphitheatre regarded with con- 
tempt the mimic murders of the stage. Stimulation too 
coarse and too intense had its usual effect in making 
the sensibilities callous. Christian emperors arose 
at length, who abolished the amphitheatre in its 
bloodier features. But by that time the genius of the 
tragic muse had long slept the sleep of death. And 
'hat muse had no resurrection until the age of Shak- 



SHAKSPEAKE, 79 

spearc. So tliat, notwithstanding a gulf of nineteen 
centuries and upwards separates Shakspeare from Euri- 
pides, fhe last of the surviving Greek tragedians, the 
one is still the nearest successor of the other, just as 
Connaught and the islands in Clew Bay are next 
neighbors to America, although three thousand watery 
columns, each of a cubic mile in dimeiisions, divide 
them from each other. 

A second reason, which lends an emphasis of novelty 
and effective power to Shakspeare's female world, is a 
peculiar fact of contrast which exists between that and 
his corresponding world of men. Let us explain. The 
purpose and the intention of the Grecian stage was not 
primarily to develope human character, whether in 
men or in women : human fates were its object ; great 
tragic situations under the mighty control of a vast 
cloudy destiny, dimly descried at intervals, and brood- 
ing over human life by mysterious agencies, and for 
mysterious ends. Man, no longer the representative of 
an august will, man, the passion-puppet of fate, could 
not with any effect display what we call a character, 
which is a distinction between man and man, ema- 
nating originally from the will, and expressing its 
determinations, moving under the large variety of 
human impulses. The will is the central pivot of 
character ; and this was obliterated, thwarted, can- 
celled by the dark fatalism which brooded over the 
Grecian stage. That explanation will sufficiently clear 
up the reason why marked or complex variety of char- 
acter was slighted by the great principles of the Greek 
tragedy. And every scholar who has studied that 
grand drama of Greece with feeling, — that drama, 
BO magnificent, so regal, so stately, — and who has 



80 SHAKSPEARE. 

thoughtfully investigated its principles, and its differ- 
ence from the English drama, will acknoAvledge that 
powerful and elaborate character, character, for in- 
stance, that could employ the fiftieth part of that pro- 
found analysis which has been applied to Hamlet, 
to FalstafF, to Lear, to Othello, and applied by Mrs. 
Jamicson so admirably to the full development of the 
Shakspearian heroines, would have been as much 
wasted, nay, would have been defeated, and interrujjtcd 
the blind agencies of fate, just in the same way as i^ 
would injure the shadowy grandeur of a ghost to indi- 
vidualize it too much. Milton's angels are slightly 
touched, superficially touched, with diff'erences of 
character ; but they are such diff'erences, so simple 
and general, as are just suflacient to rescue them from 
the rejiroach applied to Virgil's '■fortemque Gyan, for- 
temque CJoanthem ; ' just sufficient to make them know- 
able apart. Pliny speaks of painters who painted 
in one or two colors ; and, as respects the angelic 
characters, Milton does so ; he is monochromatic. So, 
and for reasons resting upon the same ultimate philoso- 
phy, were the mighty architects of the Greek tragedy. 
They also were monochromatic ; they also, as to the 
characters of their persons, painted in one color. And 
so far there might have been the same novelty in Shak- 
peare's men as in his women. There might have been ; 
but the reason why there is not must be sought in 
the fact, that History, the muse of History, had there 
even been no such muse as Melpomene, Avould have 
forced us into an acquaintance with human charac- 
ter. History, as the representative of actual life, of 
real man, gives us powerful delineations of character 
in its chief agents, that is, in men ; and therefore it 



SHAKSPEAEE. 8l 

is tliat Shalvspeare, the absolute creatoi of femal& 
character, was but the mightiest of all painters with 
regard to male character. Take a single instance. The 
Antony of Shakspeare, immortal for its execution, 
is found, after all, as regards the primary conception, 
in history. Shakspeare's delineation is but the expan- 
sion of the germ already preexisting, by way of 
scattered fragments, in Cicero's Philippics, in Cicero'a 
Letters, in Appian, &c. But Cleopatra, equally fine 
is a pure creation of art. The situation and the scenic 
circumstances belong to history, but the character be- 
longs to Shakspeare. 

In the great world, therefore, of woman, as the 
interpreter of the shifting phases and the lunar varie- 
ties of that mighty changeable planet, that lovely 
satellite of man, Shakspeare stands not the first only, 
not the original only, but is yet the sole authentic 
oracle of truth. Woman, therefore, the beauty of the 
female mind, this is one great field of his power. The 
supernatural world, the world of apparitions, that is 
another. For reasons which it would be easy to give, 
reasons emanating from the gross mythology of the 
ancients, no Grecian,^^ no Roman, could have con- 
ceived a ghost. That shadowy conception, the pro- 
testing apparition, the awful projection of the human 
conscience, belongs to the Christian mind. And in all 
Christendom, who, let us ask, who, who but Shakspeare 
has found the power for effectually working this mys- 
terious mode of being ? In summoning back to earth 
' the majesty of buried Denmark,' how like an awful 
necromancer does Shakspeare appear ! All the pomps 
and grandeurs which religion, which the grave, which 
the popular superstition had gathered about the subject 



82 SHAKSPEABE. 

of apparitions, are here converted to his purpose, and 
bend to one awful effect. The wormy grave brought 
into antagonism with the scenting of the early dawn ; 
the trumpet of resurrection suggested, and again as an 
antagonist idea to the crowing of the cock, (a bird 
ennobled in the Christian mythus by the part he is 
made to play at the Crucifixion;) its starting 'as a 
guilty thing' placed in opposition to its majestic ex- 
pression of offended dignity when struck at by the 
partisans of the sentinels ; its awful allusions to the 
secrets of its prison-house ; its ubiquity, contrasted 
with its local presence ; its aerial substance, yet 
clothed in palpable armor ; the heart-shaking solemnity 
of its language, and the appropriate scenery of its 
haunt, viz., the ramparts of a capital fortress, with no 
witnesses but a few gentlemen mounting guard at the 
dead of night, — what a mist, what a mirage of vapor, 
is here accumulated, through which the dreadful being 
in the centre looms upon us in far larger proportions, 
than could have happened had it been insulated and 
left naked of this circumstantial pomp ! In the Tem- 
pest, again, what new modes of life, preternatural, yet 
far as the poles from the spiritualities of religioa ! 
Ariel in antithesis to Caliban ! What is most ethereal 
to what is most animal ! A phantom of air, an 
abstraction of the dawn and of vesper sun-lights, a 
bodiless sylph on the one hand ; on the other a gross 
carnal monster, like the Miltonic Asmodai, ' the flesh- 
liest incubus ' among the fiends, and yet so far enno- 
bled into interest by his intellectual power, and by 
the grandeur of misanthropy ! ^^ In the Midsummer- 
NigJWs Dream, again, we have the old traditional 
faiiy, a lovely mode of preternatural life, remodified 



SHAKSrEAIlE. 83 

by Shal^spcare's eternal talisman. Oberon and Titanin 
remind us at first glance of Ariel. They approach, 
but how far they recede. They are like — ' like, but, 
oh, how different ! ' And in no other exhibition of 
this dreamy population of the moonlight forests and 
forest-lawns, are the circumstantial proprieties of fairy 
life so exquisitely imagined, sustained, or expressed. 
The dialogue between Oberon and Titania is, of itself 
and taken separately from its connection, one of the 
most delightful poetic scenes that literature affords. 
The witches in Macbeth are another variety of super- 
natural life, in which Shakspeare's power to enchant 
and to disenchant are alike portentous. The circum- 
stances of the blasted heath, the army at a distance, 
the withered attire of the mysterious hags, and the 
choral litanies of their fiendish Sabbath, are as finely 
imagined in their kind as those which herald and 
which surround the ghost in Hamlet. There we see 
the positive of Shakspeare's superior power. But now 
turn and look to the negative. At a time when 
the trials of witches, the royal book on demonology, 
and popular superstition (all so far useful, as they pre- 
pared a basis of undoubting faith for the poet's serious 
use of such agencies) had degraded and polluted the 
ideas of these mysterious beings by many mean asso- 
ciations, Shakspeare does not fear to employ them in 
high traged)', (a tragedy moreover which, though not 
the very greatest of his efforts as an intellectual whole, 
nor as a struggle of passion, is among the greatest in 
any view, and positively the greatest for scenical gran- 
deur, and in that respect makes the nearest approach 
of all English tragedies to the Grecian model ;) he 
does not fear to introduce, for the same appalling eff(;c* 



84 SHAKSPEAKE. 

as that for wliicli ^'Escliylus introduced the Eumcnides, 
a triad of old women, concerning whom an English 
wit has remarked this grotesque peculiarity in the 
popular creed of that day, — that although potent over 
winds and storms, in league with powers of darkness, 
they yet stood in awe of the constable, — yet relying 
on his own supreme power to disenchant as well as to 
enchant, to create and to uncreate, he mixes these 
women and their dark machineries with the power of 
armies, with the agencies of kings, and the fortunes of 
martial kingdoms. Such was the sovereignty of this 
poet, so mighty its compass ! 

A third fund of Shakspeare's peculiar power lies in 
his teeming fertility of fine thoughts and sentiments. 
From his works alone might be gathered a golden 
bead-roll of thoughts the deepest, subtil est, most 
pathetic, and yet most catholic and universally intelli- 
gible ; the most characteristic, also, and appropriate to 
the particular person, the sitviation, and the case, yet, 
at the same time, applicable to the circumstances of 
every human being, under all the accidents of life, and 
all vicissitudes of fortune. But this subject offers so 
vast a field of observation, it being so eminently the 
prerogative of Shakspeare to have thought more finely 
and more extensively than all other poets combined, 
that we cannot wrong the dignity of such a theme by 
doing more, in our narrow limits, than simply no- 
ticing it as one of the emblazonries upon Shakspeare's 
shield. 

Fourthly, we shall indicate (and, as in the last case, 
harely indicate, without attempting in so vast a field to 
offer any inadequate illustrations) one mode of Shak- 
speare's dramatic excellence, which hitherto has not 



SHAKSPEABE. 85 

attracted any special or separate notice. We allude to 
the forms of life, and natural human passion, as appar- 
ent in the structure of his dialogue. Among the many 
defects and infirmities of the French and of the Italian 
drama, indeed, we may say of the Greek, the dialogue 
proceeds always by independent speeches, replying 
indeed to each other, but never modified in its several 
openings by tlie momentary effect of its several termi- 
nal forms immediately preceding. Now, in Shak- 
spcare, who first set an example of that most important 
innovation, in all his impassioned dialogues, each rej)ly 
or rejoinder seems the mere rebound of the previous 
speech. Every form of natural interruption, breaking 
through the restraints of ceremony under the impulses 
of tempestuous passion ; every form of hasty interro- 
gative, ardent reiteration when a question has been 
evaded ; every form of scornful repetition of the hos- 
tile words ; every impatient continuation of the hostile 
statement ; in short, all modes and formulae by which 
anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn, imj^atience, or excite- 
ment under any movement whatever, can disturb or 
modify or dislocate the formal bookish style of com- 
mencement, — these are as rife in Shakspeare's dia- 
logue as in life itself; and how much vivacity, how 
profound a verisimilitude, they add to the scenic effect 
as an imitation of human passion and real life, we need 
not say. A volume might be written, illustrating the 
vast varieties of Shakspeare's art and power in this one 
field of improvement ; another volume might be dedi- 
cated to the exposure of the lifeless and unnatural 
result from the opposite practice in the foreign stages 
of France and Italy. And we may truly say, that 
were Shakspeare distinguished from them by this 



86 



SHAKSPEAEE. 



single feature of nature and propriety, he would 
on that account alone have merited a great immor- 
tality. 

The dramatic works of Snakspeare generally ac- 
knowledged to be genuine consist of thirty-five pieces. 
The following is the chronological order in which they 
are supposed to have been written, according to Mr. 
Malone, as given in his second edition of Shak- 
speare, and by Mr. George Chalmers in his Supple- 
mental Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare 
Papers : 



1. The Comedy of Errors, 

2. Love's Labor's Lost, 

3. Romeo and Juliet, 

4. Henry VI., the First Part, 

5. Henry VI., the Second Part, 

6. Henry VI., the Third Part, 

7. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 

8. Richard III., 

9. Richard II., 

10. The Merry Wives of Windsor, 

11. Henry IV., the First Part, 

12. Henry IV., the Second Part, 

13. Henry v., 

14. Merchant of Venice, 

15. Hamlet, 

16. King John, 

17. A Midsummer-Night's Dream, 

18. The Taming of the Shrew, 

19. All's Well that Ends Well, 

20. Much Ado about Nothing, 

21. A^ You Like It, 



Chalmers. 


Malone 


1591 


1592 


1592 


1594 


1592 


1596 


1593 


1589 


1595 


1591 


1595 


1591 


, 1595 


1591 


1596 


1593 


1596 


1593 


1596 


1601 


1597 


1597 


1597 


1599 


1597 


1599 


1597 


1594 


1598 


1600 


1598 


159*^ 


1598 


1594 


1599 


1596 


1599 


1606 


1599 


1600 


1602 


1599 





SHAKSPEAJRE 




8 






Chalmers. 


Malone. 


22. 


Troilus and Cressida, 


1610 


1602 


23. 


Timon of Athens, 


1611 


IGIO 


24. 


The Winter's Tale, 


1601 


1611 


25. 


Measure for Measure, 


1604 


1603 


26. 


King Lear, 


1605 


1605 


27. 


Cymbeline, 


1606 


1609 


28. 


Macbeth, 


1606 


1G06 


29. 


Julius Ciesar, 


1607 


1007 


30. 


Antony and Cleopatra, 


1608 


IGOB 


31. 


Coriolanus, 


1609 


1610 


32. 


The Tempest, 


1613 


1611 


33. 


The Twelfth Night, 


1613 


1607 


34. 


Henry VIII., 


1613 


1603 


35. 


Othello, 


1614 


1604 



Pericles and Titus Andronicus, although, inserted in 
all the late editions of Shakspeare's Plays, are omitted 
in the above list, both by Malone and Chalmers, as not 
being Shakspeare's. 

The first edition of the Works was published in 
1623, in a folio volume entitled Mr. William Shak- 
speare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. The 
second edition was published in 1632, the third in 
1664, and the fourth in 1685, all in folio; but the 
edition of 1623 is considered the most authentic. 
Rowe published an edition in seven vols. Bvo, in 1709. 
Editions were published by Pope, in six vols. 4to, in 
1725 ; by Warburton, in eight vols. 8vo, in 1747; by 
Dr. Johnson, in eight vols. 8vo, in 1765 ; by Stevens, 
in four vols. 8vo, m 1766 ; by Malone, in ten vols. 8vo, 
in 1 789 ; by Alexander Chalmers, in nine vols. 8vo, in 
1811 ; by Johnson and Steevens, revised by Isaac 
Reed, in twenty-one vols. Bvo, in 1813 ; and the Plays 



8d SHAKSPEAEE. 

and Poems, Avith notes by Malone, were edited by 
James Boswell, and publisbed in twenty-one vols. 8vo, 
in 1821. Besides these, numerous editions bave been 
published from time to time. 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 9. 

Mr. Campbell, the latest editor of Shakspeare's dramatio 
works, observes that ' the poet's name has been vai'iously writteu 
Shaxpeare, Shackspeare, Shakspeare, and Shakspere : ' to which 
varieties might be added Shagspere, from the Worcester Marriage 
License, published in 1836 But the fact is, that by combining 
with all the differences in spelling the first syllable, all those in 
spelling the second, more tlian twenty-five distinct varieties of the 
name may be expanded, (like an algebraic series,) for the choice of 
the curious in mis-spelling. Above all things, those varieties 
which arise fiom the intercalation of the middle e, (that is, the e 
muuediately before the final syilable spear,) can never be ovei- 
looked by those who remember, at the opening of the Dunciad, 
the note upon this very question about the orthography of Shak- 
speare's name, as also upon the other great question about the 
title of the immortal Satire, Whether it ought not to have been 
the Dunceiade, seeing that Dunce, its great author and progeni- 
tor, cannot possibly dispense with the letter e. Meantime we 
must remark, that the first three of Mr. Campbell's variations are 
mere caprices of the press; as is Shagspere; or, more probal)ly, 
this last euphonious variety arose out of the gross clownish pro- 
nunciation of the two hiccuping ' marksmen ' who rode over to 
Worcester for the license; and one cannot forbear laughing at tho 
bishop's secretary for having been so misled by two vai'lets, pro- 
fessedly incapable of signing their own names. The same drunken 
villains had cut down the bride's name Hathawaxj into Huthwcy. 
Finnlly, to treat the matter with seriousness, Sir Frederick Mad- 
den has shown, in his recent letter to the Society of Antiquaries, 
that the poet himself in all probability wrote the name uniform!/ 
8 [89J 



90 NOTES. 

Shakspere. Orthography, both of proper names, of appellatiyes, 
and of words universally, was very unsettled up to a period long 
subsequent to that of Shakspeare. Still it must usually have 
happened that names written variously and laxly by others, would 
be written uniformly by the owners; especially by those owners 
who had occasion to sign their names frequently, and by literary 
people, whose attention was often, as well as consciously, directed 
to the proprieties of spelling. Shakspeare is now too familiar to 
the eye for any alteration to be attempted ; but it is pretty cer- 
tain that Sir Frederick Madden is right in stating the poet's own 
signature to have been uniformly Shakspere. It is so written 
twice in the course of his will, and it is so written on a blank leaf 
of Florio's English translation of Montaigne's Essays; a book 
recently discovered, and sold, on account of its autograph, for a 
hundred guineas. 

Note 2. Page 10. 
But, as a proof that, even in the case of royal christenings, it 
was not thought pious to ' tempt God,' as it were by delay, Edward 
VI., the only son of Henry VIII., was born on the 12th day of 
October, in the year 1537. And there was a delay on account of 
the sponsors, since the birth was not in London. Yet how little 
that delay was made, may be seen by this fact : The birth took 
place in the dead of the night, the day was Friday ; and yet, in 
spite of all delay, the christening was most pompously celebrated 
on the succeeding Monday. And Prince Arthur, the elder 
brother of Henry VIII., was christened on the very next Sunday 
succeeding to his birth, notwithstanding an inevitable delay, occa- 
sioned by the distance of Lord Oxford, his godfather, and the ex- 
cessive rains, which prevented the earl being reached by couriers, 
or himself reaching Winchester, without extraordinai-y exertions. 

Note 3. Page 17. 
A great modern poet refers to this very case of music entering 
' the mouldy chambers of the dull idiot's brain ; ' but in support 
of what seems to us a baseless hypothesis. 

Note 4. Page 18. 
Probably Addison's fear of the national feeling was a good deal 



NOTES. 91 

strengthened by his awe of- Milton and of Dryden, both of whom 
had expressed a homage towards Shakspeare which language 
cannot transcend. Amongst his political friends also were many 
intense admirers of Shakspeare. 

Note 5. Page 20. 
He who is weak enough to kick and spurn his own native liter- 
ature, even if it were done with more knowledge than is shown 
by Lord Shaftesbury, will usually be kicked and spurned in his 
turn ; and accordingly it has often been remarked that the Char- 
acteristics are unjustly neglected in our days. For Lord Shafes- 
bury, with all his pedantry, was a man of great talents. Leibnita 
hatl the sagacity to see this through the mists of a translation. 

Note 6. Page 21. 
Perhaps the most bitter political enemy of Charles I. will have 
the candor to allow that, for a prince of those times, he was truly 
and eminently accomplished. His knowledge of the arts was con- 
siderable; and, as a pati'on of art, he stands foremost amongst 
all British sovereigns to this hour. He said truly of himself, and 
wisely as to the principle, that he understood English law as well 
as a gentleman ought to understand it ; meaning that an attorney's 
minute knowledge of forms and technical niceties was illiberal. 
Speaking of him as an author, we must remember that the Eikon 
Basil ike is still unappropriated ; that question is still open. But 
supposing the king's claim negatived, still, in his controversy with 
Henderson, in his negotiations at the Isle of Wight and elsewhere, 
he discovered a power of argument, a learning and a strength of 
memory, which are truly admirable; whilst the whole of his ac 
complishments are recommended by a modesty and a humility aa 
rare as they are unaffected. 

Note 7. Page 25. 
The necessity of compression obliges us to omit many argu- 
ments and references by which we could demonstrate the fact, that 
Shakspeare's reputation was always in a progressive state; allow- 
ing only for the interruption of about seventeen years , which thia 
poet, in common with all others, sustained, not so much from the 
Btate of war, (which did not fully occupy four of those years,) as 



92 NOTES. 

from the triumpli of a gloomy fanaticism. Deduct the twenty- 
three years of the seventeenth century, which had elapsed before 
the first folio appeared, to this space add seventeen years of fa- 
natical madness, during fourteen of which all dramatic entertain- 
ments were suppressed, the remainder is sixty years. And surely 
the sale of four editions of a vast folio in that space of time was 
an expresMon of an abiding interest. JVo other poet, except 
Spenser, lontinued to sell throughout the century. Besides, in 
arguing the^ase of a dramatic poet, we must bear in mind, that 
although reMers of learned books might be diflused over the face 
of the land, and readers of poetry would be chiefly concentrated 
in the metropolis; and such persons would have no need to buy 
what they heard at the theatres. But then comes the questicn, 
whether Shakspeare kept possession of the theatres. And we ai'e 
really humiliated by the gross want of sense which has been 
shown, by Malone chiefly, but also by many others, in discussing 
this question. From the Restoration to 1682, says Malone, no 
more than four plays of Shakspeare's were performed by a prin- 
cipal company in London. ' Such was the lamentable taste of 
those times, that the plays of Fletcher, Jonson, and Shirley, were 
much oftener exhibited than those of our author.' "What cant ia 
this ! If that taste were ' lamentable,' what are we to think of our 
cap time^ when plays a thousand times below those of Fletcher, 
or even of Shirley, continually displace Shakspeare ? Shakspeare 
would himself have exulted in finding that he gave way only to dra- 
matists so excellent. And, as we have before observed, both then 
and now, it is the very familiarity with Shakspeare, which often 
banishes him from audiences honestly in quest of relaxation and 
amusement. Novelty is the very soul of such relaxation ; but in our 
closets, when we are not unbending, when our minds are in a state 
of tension from intellectual cravings, then it is that we resort to 
Shakspeare : and oftentimes those who honor him most, like our- 
selves, are the most impatient of seeing his divine scenes disfigured 
by unequal representation, (good, perhaps, in a single persona- 
tion, bad in all the rest;) or to hear his divine thoughts mangled 
in the recitation; or, (which is worst of all,) to hear them dis- 
honored and defeated by imperfect apprehension in the audience, 
or by defective sympathy. _ Meantime, if one theatre played only 
four of Shakspeare's dramas, another played at least seven. But 



NOTES. 93 

the grossest fault of Malone is, in fancying the numerous altera- 
tions so many insults to Shakspeare, whereas they expressed as 
much homage to his memory as if the unaltered dramas had been 
retained. The substance was retained. The changes were merely 
concessions to the changing views of sccnical propriety; some- 
times, no doubt, made with a simple view to the revolution ef- 
fected by Davenant at the Restoration, in bringing scenes (in the 
painter's sense) upon the stage; sometimes also with a view to 
the altered fashions of the andience during the suspensions of the 
action, or perhaps to the introduction of after-pieces, by which, 
of course, the time was abridged for the main performance. A 
volume might be written upon this subject. Meantime let us 
never be told, that a poet was losing, or had lost his ground, who 
found in his lowest depression, amongst his almost idolatrous 
supporters, a great king distracted by civil wars, a mighty re- 
publican poet distracted by puritanical fiinaticism, the greatest 
successor by far of that great poet, a papist and a bigoted royal- 
ist, and finally, the leading actor of the century, who gave and 
reflected the ruling impulses of his age. 

Note 8. Page 27. 
One of the profoundest tests by which we can measnre the con- 
geniality of an author with the national genius and temper, is the 
degree in which his thoughts or his phrases interweave themselves 
with our daily conversation, and pass into the currency of the 
language. Few French authors, if any, have imparted one phrase 
to the colloquial idiom ; with respect to Shakspeare, a large dic- 
tionary might be made of such phrases as ' win golden opinions,' 
' in my mind's eye,' 'patience on a monument,' ' o'erstep the 
modesty of nature,' ' more honor'd in the breach than in the 
observance,' ' palmy state,' ' my poverty and not my will con- 
sents,' and so forth, without end. This reinforcement of the 
general language, by aids from the mintage of Shakspeare, had 
already commenced in the seventeenth century. 

Note 9. Page 28. 
In ftict, by way of representing to himself the system or scheme 
of the English roads, the reader has only to imagine one great 
lelter X, or a St. Andrew's cross, laid down from north to south, 



94 WOTES. 

and decussating at Birmingham. Even Coventry, whicli makes 
a slight variation for one or two roads, and so far disturbs this 
decussation, by shifting it eastwards, is still in Warwickshire. 

Note 10. Page 34. 
And probably so called by some remote ancestor who had emi- 
grated from the forest of Ardennes, in the Netherlands, and now 
forever memorable to English ears from its proximity to Waterloo 

Note 11. Page 36. 
Let not the reader impute to us the gross anachronism of mak- 
ing an estimate for Shakspeare's days in a coin which did not 
exist until a century, within a couple of years, after Shakspeare's 
birth, and did not settle to the value of twenty-one shillings until 
a century after his death. The nerve of such an anachronism 
would lie in putting the estimate into a mouth of that age. And 
this is precisely the blunder into which the foolish forger of 
Vortigern, &c., has fallen. He does not indeed directly mention 
guineas; but indirectly and virtually he does, by repeatedly giving 
us accounts imputed to Shakspearian contemporaries, in which 
the sum total amounts to £5 5s.; or to £26 5s.; or, again, to 
£17 17s. M. A man is careful to subscribe £14 14s., and so 
forth. But how could such amounts have arisen unless under a 
Becret reference to guineas, which were not in existence until 
Charles II. 's reign; and, moreover, to guineas at their final set- 
tlement by law into twenty-one shillings each, which did not 
take place until George I.'s reign ? 

Note 12. Page 36. 
Thcinas Campbell, the poet, in his eloquent Remarks on the 
Life and AVritings of William Shakspeare, prefixed to a popular 
edition of the poet's dramatic works. London, 1838. 

Note 13. Page 37. 
After all the assistance given to such equations between differ- 
ent times or different places by Sir George Shuckborough'a 
tables, and other similar investigations, it is still a very difficult 
problem, complex, and, after all, merely tentative in the results, 
to assign the true value in such cases; not only for the obvioua 



NOTES. 95 

reason, that the powevs of money have yaried in different direc 
tions with regard to dififerent objects, and in different degrees 
where the direction has on the whole continued the same, but 
because the very objects to be taken into computation are so inde- 
terminate, and vary so much, not only as regards century and 
century, kingdom and kingdom, but also, even in the same cen 
tury and the same kingdom, as regards rank and rank. That 
"which is a mere necessary to one, is a luxurious superfluity to 
another. And, in order to ascertain these differences, it is an 
indispensable qualification to have studied the habits and customs 
of the several classes concerned, together with the variations of 
those habits and customs. 

Note 14. Page 45. 
Never was the esse quani videri in any point more strongly 
discriminated than in this very point of gallantry to the female 
sex, as between England and France. In France, the verbal 
homage to woman is so excessive as to betray its real purpose, 
viz., that it is a mask for secret contempt. In England, little is 
said ; but, in the meantime, we allow our sovereign ruler to be 
a woman; which in France is impossible. Even that fact is of 
some importance, but less so than what follows. In every coun- 
try whatsoever, if any principle has a deep root in the moral 
feelings of the jseople, we may rely upon its showing itself, by a 
thousand evidences amongst the very lowest ranks, and in their 
daily intercourse, and their undress manners. Now in England 
there is, and always has been, a manly feeling, most widely 
diffused, of unwillingness to see labors of a coarse order, or 
requiring muscular exertions, thrown upon women. Pauperism, 
amongst other evil effects, has sometimes locally disturbed this 
predominating sentiment of Englishmen; but never at anytime 
with such depth as to kill the root of the old hereditary manli- 
ness. Sometimes at this day, a gentleman, either from careless- 
ness, or from overi'uling force of convenience, or from real defect 
of gallantry, will allow a fema'!e servant to carry his i>ortmanteau 
for him; though, after all, that spectacle is a rare one. And 
everywhere women of all ages engage in the pleasant, nay elegant, 
labors of the hay-field; but in Great Britain women are never 
■uffered to mow, which is a most athletic and exhausting labor. 



96 NOTES. 

noi' to load a cart, nor to drive a plough or hold it. In France, 
on the other hand, before the Revolution, (at which period the 
pseudo-homage, the lip-honor, was far more ostentatiously pro- 
fessed towards the female sex than at present,) a Frenchman of 
credit, and vouching for his statement by the whole weight of his 
name and personal responsibility, (M. Simond, now an American 
citizen,) records the following abominable scene as one' of no 
uncommon occurrence. A woman was in some pi'ovinces yoked 
side by side with an ass to the plough or the harrow; and M. 
Simond protests that it excited no horror to see the driver ilis- 
tributing his lashes impartially between the woman and her brute 
yoke-fellow. So much for the wordy pomps of French gallantry. 
In England, we trust, and we believe, that any man caught in 
such a situation, and in such an abuse of his power, (supposing 
the case otherwise a possible one,) would be killed on the spot. 

Note 15. Page 48. 
Amongst the people of humble rank in England, who only were 
ever asked in chui-ch, until the new-fangled systems of marriage 
came up within the last ten or fifteen years, during the currency 
of the three Sundays on which the banns were proclaimed by the 
clergyman from the reading desk, the young couple elect were 
said jocosely to be ' hanging in the bell-ropes; ' alluding perhaps 
to the joyous peal contingent on the final completion of the 
marriage. 

Note 16. Page 60. 
In a little memoir of Milton, which the author of this ai*ticle 
drew up some years ago for a public society, and which is printed 
in an abridged shape, he took occasion to remark, that Dr. John- 
son, who was meanly anxious to revive this slander against Mil- 
ton, as well as some others, had supposed Milton himself to have 
this flagellation in his mind, and indirectly to confess it, in one 
of his Latin poems, where, speaking of Cambridge, and declaring 
that he has no longer any pleasure in the thoughts of revisiting 
that university, he says, 

• Nee duri libet usque minas preferre magistri, 
Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.' 



97 



This last line the malicious critic would translate — ' And other 
things insufferable to a man of my temper.' But, as we then 
observed, ingenium is properly expressive of the intellectual 
Constitution, whilst it is the moral constitution that suffers 
degradatioit from personal chastisement — the sense of honor, of 
personal dignity, of justice, &c. Indoles is tlie proper term for 
this latter idea ; and in using the word ingenium, there cannot 
be a doubt that Milton alluded to the dry scholastic disputations, 
which were shocking and odious to his fine poetical genius. If, 
therefore, the vile story is still to be kept up in order to dishonor 
a great man, at any rate let it not in future be pretended that 
any countenance to such a slander can be drawn from the con- 
fessions of the poet himself. 

Note 17. Page 68. 
And singular enough it is, as well as interesting, that Shak- 
speare had so entirely superseded to his own ear and memory the 
name Haninet by the dramatic name of Hamlet, that in writing 
his will, he actually misspells the name of his friend Sadler, and 
calls him Hamlet. His son, however, who should have familiar- 
ized the true name to his ear, had then been dead for twenty 
years. 

Note 18. Page 72. 
' I have heard that Mr. Shakspeare was a natural wit, without 
any art at all. Hee frequented the plays all his younger time, 
but in his elder days lived at Startford, and supplied the stage 
with two plays every year, and for itt had an allowance so large, 
that he spent at the rate of £1,000 a year, as I have heard. 
Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson, had a merie meeting, 
and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour 
there contracted.' (Diary of the Rev. John Ward, A. M., Vicar 
of Stratford-upon-Avon, extending from 1648 to 1679, p. 183. 
Loud. 1839, 8vo.) 

Note 19. Page 72. 
It is naturally to bfi supposed thai Dr. Hall would attend the 
sick bed cf his father-in-law ; and the discovery of this gentle- 
man's medical diary promised some gratifi'^ation to our curiosity 
9 



98 NOTES. 

as to tlie cause of Shakspeare's death. Unforl unately, it doej 
not commence until tlie year 1617. 

Note 20. Page 73. 
An exception ought perhaps to be made for Sir Walter Scott 
and for Cervantes; but with regard to all other writers, Dante, 
suppose, or Ariosto amongst Italians, Camoens amongst tliose of 
Portugal, Schiller amongst Germans, however ably they may 
have been naturalized in foreign languages, as all of those here 
mentioned (excepting only Ariosto) have in one part of their 
works been most powerfully naturalized in English, it still re- 
mains tiue, (and the very sale of the books is proof sufficient,) 
that an alien author never does take root in the general sympa- 
thies out of his own country; he takes his station in libraries, ho 
is read by the man of learned leisure, he is known and valued by 
the refined and the elegant, but he is not (what Shakspeare is for 
Germany and America) in any proper sense a popular favorite. 

Note 21. Page 74. 
It will occur to many readers, that perhaps Homer may furnish 
the sole exception to this sweeping assertion. Any but Homer ia 
clearly and ludicrously below the level of the competition; but 
even Homer, ' with his tail on,' (as the Scottish Highlanders 
say of their chieftains when belted by their ceremonial retinues,) 
musters nothing like the force which already follows Shak- 
speare; and be it remembered, that, Homer sleeps and has long 
slept as a subject of criticism or commentary, while in Germany 
as well as England, and tiow even in France, the gathering of 
wits to the vast equipage of Shakspeare is advancing in an accel- 
erated ratio. There is, in fact, a great delusion cui-rent upon 
this subject. Innumerable references to Homer, and brief critical 
remarks on this or that pretension of Homer, this or that scene, 
this or that passage, lie scattered over literature ancient and 
modern; but the express works dedicated to the separate service 
of Homer are, after all, not many. In Greek we have only the 
large Commentary of Eustathius, and the Scholia of Didymus, 
&c. ; in French little or nothing before the prose translation of 
the seventeenth century, which Pope esteemed * elegant,' and the 
ekirmishings of Madame Dacier, La ]Motte, &c. ; in English, be- 



NOTES. 9Q 

sides the various translations and their prefiices, (which, by tho 
way, began as early as 1555,) nothing of much importance until 
tlie elaborate preface of Pope to the Iliad, and his elaborate pos1> 
script to the Odyssey — nothing certainly before that, and very 
little uidced since that, except Wood's Essay on the Life and 
Genius of Homer. On the other hand, of the books written in 
illustration or investigation of Shakspeare, a very considerable 
library might be formed in England, and another in Germany. 

Note 22. Page 76. 
Apartment is here used, as the reader will observe, in its true 
and continental acceptation, as a division or compartment of a 
house including many rooms; a suite of chambers, but a suite 
which is partitioned off, (as in palaces,) not a single chamber; a 
sense so commonly and so erroneously given to this word in 
England. 

Note 23. Page 78. 
And hence, by parity of reason, under the opposite circum- 
staiices, under the circumstances which, instead of abolishing, 
most emphatically drew forth the sexual distinctions, viz., in the 
comic aspects of social intercourse, the reason that we see no 
women on the Greek stage; the Greek Comedy, unless when it 
afifeots the extravagant fun of farce, rejects women. 

Note 24 Page 81. 
It may be thought, however, by some readers, that ^schylus, 
in his fine phantom of Darius, has approached the English ghost. 
As a foreign ghost we would wish (and we are sure that our ex- 
cellent readers would wish) to show every courtesy and attention 
to this apparition of Darius. It has the advantage of being royal, 
an advantage which it shares with the ghost of the royal Dane. 
Yet how different, how removed by a total world, from that or 
any of Shakspeare's ghosts ! Take that of Banquo, for instance. 
llow shado^vy, how unreal, yet how real ! Darius is a mere state 
ghost — a diplomatic ghost. But Banquo — he exists only for 
Macbeth; the guests do not see him, yet how solemn, how real, 
how heart-searching he is. 



100 NOTES. 



Note 25. Page 82. 
Caliban has not yet been thoroughly fathomed. For all Shak- 
epeare's great creations are like works of nature, subjects of inex- 
haustible study. It was this character of whom Charles I. and 
some of his ministers expressed such fervent admiration; and, 
among otlier circumstances, most justly they admired the new 
language almost with which he is endowed, for the purpose of 
expressing his fiendish and yet carnal thoughts of hatred to his 
master. Caliban is evidently not meant for scorn, but for abom- 
ination mixed with fear and partial respect. He is purposely 
brought into contrast with the drunken Trinculo and Stephano, 
with an advantageous result. He is much more intellectual than 
either, uses a more elevated language, not disfigured by vulgar- 
isms, and is not liable to the low passion for plunder as they are. 
He is mortal, doubtless, as his ' dam ' (for Shakspeare will not 
call her mother) Sycorax. But he inherits from her such quali- 
ties of power as a witch could be supposed to bequeath. He 
trembles indeed before Prospero ; but that is, as we are to under- 
stand , through the moral superiority of Prospero in Christian 
wisdom; for when he finds himself in the presence of dissolute 
and unprincipled men, he rises at once into the dignity of intel- 
lectual power. 



POPE 

Alexander Pope, tlae most brilliant of all wita 
wlio have at any period applied themselves to tlie 
poetic treatment of human manners, to the selecting 
from the play of himian character what is picturesque, 
or the arresting what is fugitive, was born in the city 
of London on the 21st^ day of May, in the memorable 
year 1688 ; about six months, therefore, before the 
landing of the Prince of Orange, and the opening of 
the great revolution which gave the final ratification to 
all previous revolutions of that tempestuous century. 
By the ' city ' of London the reader is to understand 
us as speaking with technical accuracy of that district, 
which lies within the ancient walls and the jurisdiction 
of the lord mayor. The parents of Pope, there is 
good reason to think, were of ' gentle blood,' which is 
the expression of the poet himself when describing 
them in verse. His mother was so undoubtedly ; and 
her illustrious son, in speaking of her to Lord Harvey, 
at a time when any exaggeration was open to an easy 
refutation, and writing in a spirit most likely to pro- 
voke it, does not scruple to say, with a tone of digni- 
fied haughtiness not unbecoming the situation of a 
filial champion on behalf of an insulted mother, that 
by birth and descent she wa? not below that young 
lady, (one of the two beautifui Miss Lepels,) whom his 

[101] 



102 POPE. 

lordship had selected from all the choir of court heau- 
ties as the future mother of his children. Of Pope's 
extraction and immediate lineage for a space of two 
generations we know enough. Beyond that we know 
little. Of this little a part is duhious ; and what we 
are disposed to receive as not dubious, rests chiefly on 
his own authority. In the prologue to his Satires, 
having occasion to notice the lampooners of the times, 
who had represented his father as ' a mechanic, a 
hatter, a farmer, nay a bankrupt,' he feels himself 
called upon to state the truth about his parents ; and 
naturally much more so at a time when the low scur- 
rilities of these obscure libellers had been adopted, 
accredited, and difi"used by persons so distinguished in 
all points of personal accomplishment and rank as 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Harvey : 
' hard as thy heart,'' was one of the lines in their joint 
pasquinade, ' hard as thy hearty and as thy birth 
ohscure.' Accordingly he makes the following formal 
statement : ' Mr. Pope's father was of a gentleman's 
family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl 
of Downe. His mother was the daughter of William 
Turner, Esq., of York. She had three brothers, one 
of whom was killed ; another died in the service of 
King Charles [meaning Charles L] ; the eldest, follow- 
ing his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in 
Spain, left her what estate remained after the seques- 
irations and forfeitures of her family.' The seques- 
trations here spoken of were those inflicted by the 
commissioners for the parliament ; and usually they 
levied a fifth, or even two fifths, according to the 
apparent delinquency of the parties. But in such 
cases two great diflferences arose in the treatment of 



POPE, 103 

the royalists ; first, that the report was colored accord- 
ing to tlie interest which a man possessed, or other 
private means for biassing the commissioners ; secondly, 
that often, when money could not be raised on mort- 
gage to meet the seqiiestration, it became neccessary 
to sell a family estate suddenly, and therefore in those 
times at great loss ; so that a nominal fifth might be 
depressed by favor to a tenth, or raised by the neces- 
sity of selling to a half. And hence might arise the 
small dowry of Mrs. Pope, notwithstanding the family 
estate in Yorkshire had centred in her person. But, 
by the way, we see from the fact of the eldest brother 
having sought service in Spain, that Mrs. Pope was a 
Papist ; not, like her husband, by conv,;rsion, but by 
hereditary faith. This account, as publicly thrown 
out in the way of challenge by Pope, was, however, 
sneered at by a certain Mr. Pottinger of those days, 
who, together with his absurd name, has been safely 
transmitted to posterity in connection with this single 
feat of'having contradicted Alexander Pope. We read 
in a diary published by the Microcosm, ' Met a large 
hat, with a. man under it.' And so, here, we cannot so 
properly say that Mr. Pottinger brings down the con- 
tradiction to our times, as that the contradiction brings 
down Mr. Pottinger. ' Cousin Pope,' said Pottinger, 
' had made himself out a fine pedigree, but he wondered 
where he got it.' And he then goes on to plead in 
abatement of Pope's pretensions, ' that an old maiden 
aunt, equally related,' (that is, standing in the same re- 
lation to himself and to the poet,) ' a great genealogist, 
who was always talking of her family, never mentioned 
this circumstance.' And again we are told, from 
another quarter, that the Earl of Guildford, after ex- 



104 POPE. 

press investigation of this matter, ' was sure that,' 
amongst the descendants of the Earls of Dc wne, ' there 
was none of the name of Pope.' How it was that 
Lord Guildford came to have any connection with the 
affair, is not stated by the biographers of Pope; but 
we have ascertained that, by marriage with a female 
descendant from the Earls of Downe, he had come 
into possession of their English estates. 

Finally, though it is rather for the honor of the 
Earls of Downe than of Pope to make out the connec- 
tion, we must observe that Lord Guildford's testimony, 
if ever given at all, is simply negative; he had found 
no proofs of the connection, but he had not found any 
proofs to destroy it ; whilst, on the other hand, it 
ought to be mentioned, though unaccountably over- 
looked, by all previous biographers, that one of Pope's 
anonymous enemies, who hated him personally, but 
was apparently master of his family history, and too 
honorable to belie his own convictions, expressly 
affirms of his own authority, and without reierence 
to any claim put forward by Pope, that he was de- 
scended from a junior branch of the Downe family. 
Which testimony has a double value ; first as corrob- 
orating the probability of Pope's statement viewed in 
the light of a fact ; and, secondly, as corroborating 
that same statement viewed in the light of a current 
story, true or false, and not as a disingenuous fiction 
put forward by Pope to confute Lord Harvey. 

It is probable to us, that the Popes, who had been 
originally transplanted from England to Ireland, had in 
the person of some cadet been re-transplanted to Eng- 
land ; and that having in that way been disconnected 
from all personal recognition, and all local memorials 



POPE. 105 

of the capital house, hy this sort of postliminium, the 
junior branch had ceased to cherish the honor of a 
descent which had now divided from all direct advan- 
tage. At all events, the researches of Pope's biogra- 
phers have not been able to trace him farther back in 
the paternal line than to his grandfather ; and he 
(which is odd enough, considering the popery of his 
descendants) \vas a clergyman of the established 
church in Hampshire. This grandfather had two sons. 
Of the eldest nothing is recorded beyond the three 
facts, that he went to Oxford, that he died there, and 
that he spent the family estate. ^ The younger son, 
whose name was Alexander, had been sent when 
young, in some commercial character, to Lisbon ; 3 
and there it was, in that centre of bigotry, that he 
became a sincere and most disinterested Catholic. 
He returned to England ; married a Catholic young 
widow ; and became the father of a second Alexander 
Pope, ullra Sauromatas notus et Antipodes. 

By his own account to Spence, Pope learned ' very 
early to read ; ' and writing he taught himself ' by 
copying from printed books ; ' all which seems to argue, 
that as an only chUd, with an indolent father and a 
most indulgent mother, he was not molested with 
much schooling in his infancy. Only one adventure is 
recorded of his childhood, viz., that he was attacked 
by a cow, thrown down, and wounded in the throat. 

Pope escaped this disagreeable kind of vaccination 
without serious injury, and was not farther tormented 
by cows or schoolmasters until he was about eight 
years old, when the family priest, that is, we presume, 
the confessor of his parents, taught him, agreeably to 
the Jesuit system, the rudiments of Greek and Latin 



106 POPE. 

concurrently. This priest was named Banister ; and 
his name is frequently employed, together with other 
fictitious names, by way of signature to the notes in 
the Dunciad, an artifice which was adopted for the 
sake of giving a characteristic variety to the notes, 
according to the tone required for the illustration of 
the text. From his tuition Pope was at length dis- 
missed to a Catholic school at Twyford, near Winches- 
ter. The selection of a school in this neighborhood, 
though certainly the choice of a Catholic family Avas 
much limited, points apparently to the old Hampshire 
connection of his father. Here an incident occurred 
which most powerfully illustrates the original and con- 
stitutional determination to satire of this irritable poet. 
He knew himself so accurately, that in after times, 
half by way of boast, half of confession, he says, 

' But touch me, and no Minister so sore : 
Whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time 
Slides into Terse and hitches in a rhyme, 
Sacred to ridicule his whole life long. 
And the sad burthen of some merry song.' 

Already, it seems, in childhood he had the same 
irresistible instinct, victorious over the strongest sense 
of personal danger. He wrote a bitter satire upon the 
presiding pedagogue, was brutally punished for this 
youthful indiscretion, and indignantly removed by his 
parents from the school. Mr. Roscoe speaks of Pope's 
personal experience as necessarily unfavorable to pub- 
lic schools ; but in reality he knew nothing of public 
schools. All the establishments for Papists were nar- 
row, and suited to their political depression ; and his 
parents were too sincerely anxious for their son's 
religious principles to risk the contagion of Protestant 
association by sending him elsewhere. • 



POPE. 107 

From the scene"* of his disgrace and illiberal punish- 
ment, he passed, according to the received accounts, 
under the tuition of several other masters in rapid 
succession. But it is the less necessary to trouble the 
reader \\ith their names, as Pope himself assures us, 
that he learned nothing from any of them. To Ban- 
ister he had been indebted for such trivial elements of 
a schoolboy's learning as he possessed at all, excepting 
those which he had taught himself. And upon him- 
self it was, and his own admirable faculties, that he 
was now finally thrown for the rest of his education, 
at an age so immature that many boys are then first 
entering their academic career. Pope is supposed to 
have been scarcely twelve years old when he assumed 
the office of self-tuition, and bade farewell for ever to 
schools and tutors. 

Such a phenomenon is at any rate striking. It is 
the more so, under the circumstances which attended 
the plan, and under the results which justified its exe- 
cution. It seems, as regards the plan, hardly less 
strange that prudent parents should have acquiesced 
'.n a scheme of so much peril to his intellectual inter- 
ests, than that the son, as regards the execution, should 
have justified their confidence by his final success. 
More especially this confidence surprises us in the 
father. A doating mother might shut her eyes to all 
remote evils in the present gratification to her affec- 
tions ; but Pope's father was a man of sense and prin- 
ciple ; he must have weighed the risks besetting a boy 
left to his own intellectual guidance ; and to those 
risks he would allow the more weight from his own 
conscious defect of scholarship and inability to guide 
or even to accompany his son's studies. He could 



108 POPE. 

neither direct the proper choice of studies ; nor in any 
one stud)", taken separately, could he suggest the propar 
choice of books. 

The case we apprehend to have been this. Alexan- 
der Pope, the elder, was a man of philosophical desires 
and unambitious character. Quiet and seclusion and 
innocence of life, — these were what he affcctod for 
himself; and that which had been found available for 
his own happiness, he might reasonably wish for his 
son. The two hinges upon which his plans may be 
supposed to have turned, were, first, the political 
degradation of his sect ; and, secondly, the fact that 
his son was an only child. Had he been a Protestant, 
or had he, though a Papist, been burthened with a 
large family of children, he would doubtless have 
pursued a different course. But to him, and, as he 
sincerely hop2d, to his son, the strife after civil honors 
was sternly barred. Apostasy only could lay it open. 
And, as the sentiments of honor and duty in this point 
fell in with the vices of his temperament, high princi- 
ple concurring with his constitutional love of ease, we 
need liot wonder that he should early retire from com- 
merce with a very moderate competence, or that he 
should suppose the same fortune sufficient for one who 
was to stand in the same position. This son was from 
his birth deformed. That made it probable that he 
might not marry. If he should, and happened to have 
children, a small family would find an adequate pro- 
vision in the patrimonial funds ; and a large one at the 
worst could only throw him upon the same commerciz.l 
exertions to which he had been obliged himself. The 
Roman Catholics, indeed, were just then situated as our 
modern Quakers are. Law to the one, as conscience 



POPE. 109 

to the otlicr, closed all modes of active employment 
except that of commercial industry. Either his sou, 
therefore, would be a rustic recluse, or, like himself, 
he Avould be a merchant. 

With such prospects, what need of an elaborate 
education ? And where was such an education to be 
sought ? At the petty establishments of the suffering 
Catholics, the instruction, as he had found experimen- 
tally, was poor. At the great national establishments 
his son would be a degraded person ; one who was 
permanently repelled from every arena of honor, and 
sometimes, as in cases of public danger, was banished 
from the capital, deprived of his house, left defenceless 
against common ruffians, and rendered liable to the 
control of every village magistrate. To one in these 
circumstances solitude was the wisest position, and the 
best qualification, for that was an education that would 
furnish aids to solitary thought. No need for brilliant 
accomplishments to him who must never display them ; 
forensic arts, pulpit erudition, senatorial eloquence, 
academical accomplishments — these would be lost to 
one against whom the courts, the pulpit, the senate, the 
universities, were closed. Nay, by possibility worse 
than lost ; they might prove so many snares or positive 
bribes to apostasy. Plain English, therefore, and the 
high thinking of his compatriot authors, might prove 
the best position for the mind of an English Papist 
destined to seclusion. 

Such are the considerations under which we read 
and interpret the conduct of Pope's parents ; and they 
lead us to regard as wise and conscientious a scheme 
•which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been 
pitiably foolish. And be it remembered, that to these 



no POPE. 

considerations, derived exclusively from the civil cir- 
cumstances of the family, were superadded othera 
derived from the astonishing prematurity of the indi- 
vidual. That boy who could write at twelve years of 
age the beautiful and touching stanzas on Solitude, 
might well be trusted with the superintendence of his 
own studies. And the stripling of sixteen, who could 
so far transcend in good sense the accomplished states- 
men or men of the world with whom he afterwards 
corresponded, might challenge confidence for such a 
choice of books as v/ould best promote the develop- 
ment of his own faculties. 

In reality, one so finely endowed as Alexander Pope, 
could not easily lose his way in the most extensive or 
ill-digested library. And though he tells Atterbury, 
that at one time he abused his opportunities by reading 
controversial divinity, we may be sure that his own 
native activities, and the elasticity of his mind, would 
speedily recoil into a just equilibrium of study, under 
wider and happier opportunities. Reading, indeed, for 
a person like Pope, is rather valuable as a means of 
exciting his own energies and of feeding his own 
sensibilities, than for any direct acquisitions of know- 
ledge, or for any trains of systematic research. All 
men are destined to devour n^.uch rubbish between the 
cradle and the grave ; and doubtless the man who is 
wisest in the choice of his books, will have read many 
a page before he dies, that a thoughtful review would 
pronounce worthless. This is the fate jf all men. 
But the reading of Pope, as a general result or mea- 
sure of his judicious choice, is best justified in his 
writings. They show him well furnished with what- 
soever he wanted for matter or for en^bellishment, for 



POPE. Ill 

H-gumcn'- or illustration, for example and model, or for 
direct and explicit imitation. 

Possibly, as we have already suggested, within the 
range of English literature Pope might have found all 
that he wanted. But variety the widest has its uses ; 
and, for the extension of his influence with the polished 
classes amongst whom he lived, he did wisely tD add 
other languages ; and a question has thus arisen with 
regard to the extent of Pope's attainments as a self- 
taught linguist. A man, or even a boy, of great 
originality, may happen to succeed best, in working 
his own native mines of thought, by his unassisted ener- 
gies. Here it is granted that a tutor, a guide, or even 
a companion, may be dispensed with, and even bene- 
ficially. But in the case of foreign languages, in at- 
taining this machinery of literature, though anomalies 
even here do arise, and men there are, like Joseph 
Scaliger, who form ther own dictionaries and gram- 
mars in the mere process of reading an unknown 
language, by far the major part of students will lose 
their time by rejecting the aid of tutors. As there has 
been much difl'erence of opinion with regard to Pope's 
skill in languages, we shall briefly collate and bring 
into one focus the stray notices. 

As to the French, Voltaire, who knew Pope person- 
ally, declared that he ' could hardly read it, and spoke 
not one syllable of the language.' But perhaps Vol- 
taire might dislike Pope ? On the contrary, he was 
acquainted with his works, and admired them to the 
very level of their merits. Speaking of him after 
death to Fi ederick of Prussia, he prefers him to 
Horace and Boileau, asserting that, by co'n2)ari.son 
with them. 



112 POPE. 

'Pope approfondit ce qu'ils ont effleure. 
D'un esprit plus hardi, d'un pas plus assurfe, 
II porta le flambeau dans I'abime de I'etre; 
Et rhomme uvec lui seul apprit i se connitre. 
L'art quelquefois frivole, et quelquefois divine, 
L'art des vers est dans Pope utile au genre humain.' 

This is not a wise account of Pope, for it does not 
abstract the characteristic feature of his power ; but it 
id a very kind one. And of course Voltaire could not 
have meant any unkindness in denying his knowledge 
of French. But he was certainly wrong. Pope, in 
Jds presence, would decline to speak or to read a 
language of which the pronunciation was confessedly 
beyond him. Or, if he did, the impression left would 
be still worse. In fact, no man ever will pronounce or 
talk a language which he does not use, for some part 
of every day, in the real intercourse of life. But that 
Pope read French of an ordinary cast with fluency 
enough, is evident from the extensive use which he 
made of Madame Dacier's labors on the Illiad, and still 
more of La Valterie's prose translation of the Iliad. 
Already in the year 1718, and long before his personal 
knowledge of Voltaire, Pope had shown his accurate 
acquaintance with some voluminous French aiithors, in 
a way which, we suspect, was equally surprising and 
offensive to his noble correspondent. The Duke of 
Buckingham ^ had addressed to Pope a letter, contain- 
ing some account of the controversy about Homer, 
which had then been recently carried on in France 
between La Motte and Madame Dacier. This account 
was delivered with an air of teaching, which was very 
little in harmony with its excessive shallowness. Pope, 
who sustained the part of pupil in this interlude, re- 



POPE. 113 

plied in a manner that exhibited a knowledge of the 
parties concerned in the controversy much superior to 
that of the duke. In particular, he characterized the 
cxcel'.nit notes upon Horace of M. Dacier, the hus- 
band, in very just terms, as distinguished from those of 
his conceited and half-learned Avife ; and the whole 
reply of Pope seems very much as though he had 
been playing off a mystification on his grace. Un- 
doubtedly the pompous duke felt that he had caught a 
Tartar. Now, M. Dacier's Horace, which, with the 
text, fills nine volumes. Pope could not have read 
except in French ; for they are not even yet translated 
into English. Besides, Pope read critically the French 
translations of his own Essay on Man, Essay on Criti- 
cism, Rape of the Lock, &c. He spoke of them ?.s 
a critic ; and it was at no time- a fault of Pope's to 
make false pretensions. All readers of Pope's Satires 
must also recollect numerous proofs, that he had read 
Boilcau with so much feeling of his peculiar merit, 
that he has appropriated and naturalized in English 
some of his best passages. Voltaire was, therefore, 
certainly wrong. 

Of Italian literature, meantime. Pope knew little or 
nothing ; and simply because he knew nothing of the 
language. Tasso, indeed, he admired ; and, which is 
singular, more than Ariosto. But we believe that he 
had read him only in English ; and it is certain th«t 
he could not take up an Italian author, either in 
prose or verse, for the unaffected amusement of his 
leisure. 

Greek, we all know, has been denied to Pope, ever 
since he translated Homer, and chiefly in consequence 
of that translation. This seems at first sight unfair, 
10 



114 



because criticism has not succeeded in fixing upon 
Pope any errors of ignorance. Tlis deviations from 
Homer were uniformly the result of imperfect sym- 
pathy with the naked simplicity of the antique, and 
therefore wilful deviations, not (like those of his more 
pretending competitors, Addison and Tickell) pure 
blunders of misapprehension. But yet it is not incon- 
sistent with this concession to Pope's merits, that we 
must avow our belief in his thorough ignorance of 
Greek when he first commenced his task. And to us 
it seems astonishing that nobody should have adverted 
to that fact as a sufl[icient solution, and in fact the only 
plausible solution, of Pope's excessive depression of 
spirits in the earliest stage of his labors. This depres- 
sion, after he had once pledged himself to his sub- 
scribers for the fulfilment of his task, arose from, and 
could have arisen from nothing else than, his conscious 
ignorance of Greek in connection with the solemn 
responsibilities he had assumed in the face of a great 
nation. Nay, even countries as presumptuously dis- 
dainful of tramontane literature as Italy took an inter- 
est in this memorable undertaking. Bishop Berkeley 
found Salvini reading it at Florence ; and Madame 
Dacier even, who read little but Greek, and certainly 
no English until then, condescended to study it. 
Pope's dejection therefore, or rather agitation (for it 
impressed by sympathy a tumultuous character upon his 
dreams, which lasted for years after the cause had 
ceased to operate) was perfectly natural under the ex- 
planation we have given, but not otherwise. And 
how did he surmount this unhappy self-distrust ? 
Paradoxical as it may sound, we will venture to say, 
that with the innumerable aids for interpreting HoraeT 



115 



which even then existed, a man sufficiently acquainted 
with liatin might make a translation even critically 
exact. This Pope was not long in discovering. Other 
alleviations of his labor concurred, and in a ratio daily 
increasing. 

The same formulae were continually recurring, such 
as, 

'But him answering, thus addressed the swift-footed Achilles ; ' 
Or, 

*But him sternly beholding, thus spoke Agamemnon the king 
of men.' 

Then, again, universally the Homeric Greek, from 
many causes, is easy ; and especially from these two : 
\st. The simplicity of the thought, which never gathers 
into those perplexed knots of rhetorical condensation, 
which we find in the dramatic poets of a higher civil- 
ization. 2dly, From the constant bounds set to the 
expansion of the thought by the form of the metre ; an 
advantage of verse which makes the poets so much 
easier to a beginner in the German language than the 
illimitable weavers of prose. The line or the stanza 
reins up the poet tightly to his theme, and will not 
suffer him to expatiate. Gradually, therefore, Pope 
came to read the Homeric Greek, but never accu- 
rately ; nor did he ever read Eustathius without aid 
from Latin. As to any knowledge of the Attic Greek, 
of the Greek of the dramatists, the Greek of Plato, 
the Greek of Demosthenes, Pope neither had it nor 
affected to have it. Indeed it was no foible of Pope's, 
as we will repeat, to make claims Avhich he had not, 
or even to dwell ostentatiously iipon those which he 
had. And with respect to Greek in particular, there is 
a manuscript letter in existence from Pope to a Mr. 



116 POPE. 

Bridges at Falham, wliicli, speaking of tlie original 
Homer, distinctly records the knowledge which he had 
of his own imperfectness in the language.' Chapman, 
a most spirited translator of Homer, probably had no 
very critical skill in Greek ; and Hobbes was, beyond 
all question, as poor a Grecian as he was a doggerel 
translator ; yet in this letter Pope professes his willing 
submission to the ' authority' of Chapman and Hobbes, 
as superior to his own. 

P inally, in Latin, Pope was a ' considerable profi- 
cient,' even by the cautious testimony of Dr. Johnson ; 
and in this language only the doctor was an accom- 
plished critic. If Pope had really the proficiency here 
ascribed to him, he must have had it already in his 
boyish years ; for the translation from Statius, which 
is the principal monument of his skill, was executed 
before he was fourteen. We have taken the trouble 
to throw a hasty glance over it ; and whilst we readily 
admit the extraordinary talent which it shows, as do 
all the juvenile essays of Pope, we cannot allow that it 
argues any accurate skill in Latin. The word Malea; 
as we have seen noticed by some editor, he makes 
Malea; which in itself, as the name was not of com- 
mon occurrence, would not have been an error worth 
noticing ; but taken in connection with the certainty 
that Pope had the original line before him — 

' Arripit ex templo Maleaa de valle resurgens, ' 

when not merely the scanning theoretically, but the 
whole rhythmns practically, to the most obtuse ear, 
would be annihilated by Pope's false quantity, is a 
blunder which serves to show his utter ignorance of 
prosody. But, even as a version of the sense, with 



POPE. 117 

every allowance for a poet's license of compression 
and expansion, Pope's translation is defective, and 
argues an occasional inability to construe the text. 
For instance, at the council summoned by Jupiter, it is 
said that he at his first entrance seats himself upon his 
starry throne, but not so the inferior gods ; 

' Nee protinus ausi 
CoelicoliB, veniam donee pater ipse sedendi 
Tranquilla jubet esse manu.' 

In which passage there is a slight obscurity, from the 
ellipsis of the word sedere, or sese locare ; but the 
meaning is evidently that the other gods did not pre- 
sume to sit down protinus, that is, in immediate suc- 
cession to Jupiter, and interpreting his example as a 
tacit license to do so, until, by a gentle wave of his 
hand, the supreme father signifies his express permis- 
sion to take their seats. But Pope, manifestly unable 
to extract any sense from the passage, translates thus : 

' At Jove's assent the deities around 
In solemn state the eonsistory crowned ; ' 

Avhere at once the whole picturesque solemnity of the 
celestial ritual melts into the vaguest generalities. 
Again, at v. 178, ruptcp.que vices is translated, ' and all 
the ties of nature broke ; ' but by vices is indicated 
the alternate reign of the two brothers, as ratified by 
mutual oaths, and subsequently violated by Eteocles. 
Other mistakes might be cited, which seem to prove 
that Pope, like most self-taught linguists, was a very 
imperfect one."^ Pope, in short, never rose to such a 
point in classical literature as to read either Greek or 
Latin authors without effort, and for his private arause< 
ment 



118 POPE. 

The result, therefore, of Pope's self-tuition appears 
to us, considered in the light of an attempt to acquire 
certain accomplishments of knowledge, a most com- 
plete failure. As a linguist, he read no language with 
ease ; none with pleasure to himself ; and none with so 
much accuracy as could have carried him through the 
most popular author with a general independence of 
interpreters. But, considered with a view to his par- 
ticular faculties and slumhering originality of power 
■which required perhaps the stimlation of accident to 
arouse them effectually, we are very much disposed to 
think that the very failure of his education as an 
artificial training was a great advantage finally for 
inclining his mind to throw itself, by way of indemni- 
fication, upon its native powers. Had he attained, as 
with better tuition he would have attained, distin- 
guished excellence as a scholar, or as a student of 
science, the chances are many that he would have 
settled down into such studies as thousands could 
pursue not less successfully than he ; whilst as it was, 
the very dissatisfaction which he could not but feel 
with his slender attainments, must have given him a 
strong motive for cultivating those impulses of original 
power which he felt continually stirring within him, 
and which were vivified into trials of competition as 
ofti'n as any distinguished excellence was introduced 
to his knowledge. 

Pope's father, at the time of his birth, lived in Lom- 
bard Street ; ''' a street still familiar to the public eye, 
from its adjacency to some of the chief metropolitan 
establishments, and to the English ear possessing a 
degree of historical importance ; first, as the residence 
of those Lombards, or Milanese, who affiliated our 



POPE. 119 

infant commerce ^o the matron splendors of the Adri- 
atic and the Mediterranean ; next, as the central resort 
•of those jewellers, or ' goldsmiths,' as they were styled, 
who performed all the functions of modern hankers 
from the period of the parliamentary war to the rise 
of the Bank of England, that is, for six years after the 
birth of Pope ; and, lastly, as the seat, until lately, of 
that vast Post-Office, through which, for so long a 
period, has passed the correspondence of all nations 
and languages, upon a scale unknown to any other 
country. In this street Alexander Pope the elder had 
a house, and a warehouse, we presume annexed, in 
which he conducted the wholesale business of a linen 
merchant. As soon as he had made a moderate fortune 
he retired from business, first to Kensington, and 
afterwards to Binfield, in Windsor Forest. The period 
of this migration is not assigned by any writer. It is 
probable that a prudent man would not adopt it with 
any prospect of having more children. But this chance 
might be considered as already extinguished at the 
birth of Pope ; for though his father had then only 
attained his forty-fourth year, Mrs. Pope had com- 
pleted her forty-eighth. It is probable, from the 
interval of seven days which is said to have elapsed 
between Pope's punishment and his removal from the 
school, that his parents were then living at such a dis- 
tance from him as to prevent his ready communication 
with them, else we may be sure that Mrs. Pope would 
have flown on the wings of love and wrath to the 
rescue of her darling. Supposing, therefore, as we do 
suppose, that Mr. Bromley's school in London was the 
scene of his disgrace, it would appear on this argument 
tliat his parents were then living in Windsor Forest. 



1 20 POPE. 

And this hypothesis falls in with another anecdote in 
Pope's life, which we know partly upon his own 
authority. He tells Wycherley that he had seen Dry- 
den, and barely seen him. Virgilium vidi tantum. 
This is presumed to have been in Will's Coffee-hou?e, 
whither any person in search of Dryden would of 
course resort; and it must have been before Pope was 
twelve years old, for Dryden died in 1700. Now there 
is a letter of Sir Charles Wogen's, stating that he first 
took Pope to Will's ; and his words are, ' from our 
forest.' Consequently, at that period, when he had 
not completed his twelfth year, Pope was already living 
in the forest. 

From this period, and so long as the genial spirits 
of youth lasted. Pope's life must have been one dream 
of pleasure. He tells Lord Harvey that his mother 
did not spoil him ; but that was no doubt because 
there was no room for wilfulness or waywardness on 
either side, when all was one placid scene of parental 
obedience and gentle filial authority. We feel per- 
suaded that, if not in words, in spirit and inclination, 
they would, in any notes they might have occasion to 
write, subscribe themselves 'Your dutiful parents.' 
And of what consequence in whose hands were the 
reins which were never needed ? Every reader must 
be pleased to know that these idolizing parents lived 
to see their son at the very summit of his public ele- 
vation ; even his father lived two years and a half after 
the publication of his Homer had commenced, and 
when his fortune was made ; and his mother lived for 
nearly eighteen years more. What a felicity for her, 
how rare and how perfect to find that he, who to her 
maternal eyes was naturally the most perfect of human 



POPE. 121 

beingd, and the idol of her heart, had ah-cady been the 
idol of the nation before he had completed his youth. 
She had also another blessing not always commanded 
by the most devoted love ; many sons there are who 
think it essential to manliness that they should treat 
their motlier's doating anxiety with levity or even 
ridicule. But Pope, who w^as the model of a good son, 
never swerved in words, manners, or conduct, from the 
most respectful tenderness, or intermitted the piety of 
his attentions. And so far did he carry this regard 
for his mother's comfort, that, well knowing how she 
lived upon his presence or by his image, he denied 
himself for many years all excursions which could not 
be fully accomplished within the revolution of a week. 
And to this cause, combined with the excessive length 
of his mother's life, must be ascribed the fact that 
Pope never went abroad ; not to Italy with Thomson 
or with Berkeley, or any of his diplomatic friends ; not 
to Ireland, where his presence would have been hailed 
as a national honor ; not even to France, on a visit to 
his admiring and admired friend Lord Bolingbroke. 
For as to the fear of sea-sickness, that did not arise 
until a late period of his life ; and at any period would 
not have operated to prevent his crossing from Dover 
to Calais. It is possible that, in his earlier and more 
sanguine years, all the perfection of his filial love may 
not have availed to prevent him from now and then 
breathing a secret m^irmur at confinement so constant. 
But it is certain that, long before he passed the meridian 
of his life. Pope had come to view this confinement with 
far other thoughts. Experience had then taught him 
that to no man is the privilege granted of possessing 
more than one or two friends who are such in extrem- 

n 



122 POPE. 

.ty. By that time lie had come to vieA\ his mother's 
death with fear and anguish. She, he ki ew by many 
a sign, would have been happy to lay down licr life for 
his sake ; but for others, even those who were the 
most friendly an 1 the most constant in their attentions, 
he felt but too certainly that his death, or his heavy 
affliction, might cost them a few sighs, but would not 
materially disturb their peace of mind. ' It is but in 
a very narrow circle,' says he, in a confidential letter, 
' that friendship walks in this world, and I care not to 
tread out of it more than I needs must; knowing well 
it is but to two or three, (if quite so many,) that any 
man's welfare or memory can be of consequence.' 
After such acknowledgments, we are not surprised to 
find him writing thus of his mother, and his fearful 
struggles to fight off the shock of his mother's death, 
at a time when it was rapidly approaching. After 
having said of a friend's death, ' The subject is beyond 
writing upon, beyond cure or ease by reason or reflec- 
tion, beyond all but one thought, that it is the w^ill of 
God,' he goes on thus, ' So will the death of my 
mother be, which now I tremble at, now resign to, 
now bring close to me, now set farther off; every day 
alters, turns me about, confuses my whole frame of 
mind.' There is no pleasure, he adds, which the 
world can give, ' equivalent to countervail either the 
death of one I have so long lived with, or of one I 
have so long lived for.' How will he comfort himself 
after her death ? ' I have nothing left but to turn my 
thoughts "".o one comfort, the last we usually think of, 
though tne only one we should in wisdom depend 
upon. I sit in her room, and she is always present 
before me but when I sleep. I wonder I am so well. 
1 have shed many tears ; but now I weep at nothing.' 



POPE. 123 

A man, therefore, happier thm Pope in his domestic 
rela<.ions cannot easily have lived. It is true these 
relations were circumscribed ; had they been -wider, 
they coxild not have been so happy. But Pope was 
equally fortunate in his social relations. What, indei^d, 
most of all surprises us, is the courteous, flattering, 
and even brilliant reception which Pope found from his 
earliest boyhood amongst the most accomplished men 
of the world. Wits, courtiers, statesmen, grandees the 
most dignified, and men of fashion th3 most brilliant, 
all alike treated him not only with pointed kindness, 
but with a respect that seemed to acknowledge him as 
their intellectual superior. Without rank, high birth, 
fortune, without even a literary name, and in defiance 
of a deformed person, Pope, whilst yet only sixteen 
years of age, was caressed, and even honored ; and 
all this with no one recommendation but simply the 
knowledge of his dedication to letters, and the prema- 
ture expectations Avhich he raised of future excellence. 
Sir William Trumbull, a veteran statesman, who had 
held the highest stations, both diplomatic and ministe- 
rial, made him his daily companion. Wycherley, the 
old roue of the town, a second-rate wit, but not the 
less jealous on that account, showed the utmost defer- 
ence to one whom, as a man of fashion, he must have 
regarded with contempt, and between whom and him- 
self there were nearly ' fifty good years of fair and 
foul weatlier.' Cromwell,^ a fox-hunting country gen- 
tleman, but uniting with that character the pretensions 
of a wit, and aff"ecting also the reputation of a rake, 
cultivated his regard with zeal and conscious inferi- 
ority. Nay, which never in any other instance hap- 
pened to the most fortunate poet, his very inaugural 



124 POPE. 

essays iu verse were treated, not as prelusive t flforts o* 
auspicious promise, but as finished works of art, enti- 
tled to take tlieir station amongst the literature of the 
land ; and in the most worthless of all his poems, 
Walsh, an established authority, and whom Dryden 
pronounced the ablest critic of the age, found proofs of 
equality with Virgil. 

The literary correspondence with these gentlemen is 
interesting, as a model of what once passed for fine 
letter-writing. Every nerve was strained to outdo 
each other in carving all thoughts into a filagree work 
of rhetoric ; and the amoebcean contest was like that 
between two village cocks from neighboring farms 
endeavoring to overthrow each other. To us, in this 
age of purer and more masculine taste, the whole 
scene takes the ludicrous air of old and young fops 
dancing a minuet with each other, practising the most 
elaborate grimaces, sinkings and risings the most awful, 
bows the most overshadowing, until plain walking, 
running, or the motions of natural dancing, are thought 
too insipid for endurance. In this instance the taste 
had perhaps really been borrowed from France, though 
often enough we impute to France what is the native 
growth of all minds placed in similar circumstances. 
Madame de Sevigne's Letters were really models of 
grace. But Balzac, whose letters, however, are not 
without interest, had in some measure formed himself 
upon the truly magnificent rhetoric of Pliny and 
Seneca. Pope and his correspondents, meantime, 
degraded the dignity of rhetoric by applying it to 
trivial commonplaces of compliment; whereas Seneca 
applied it to the grandest themes which life or contem- 
plation can supply. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 



POPE. 125 

on first coming amongst the wits of the day, naturally 
adopted their style. She found this sort of euphuism 
established ; and it was not for a very young woman to 
oppose it. But her masculine understanding and pow- 
erful good sense, shaken free, besides, from all local 
follies by travels and extensive commerce with the 
world, first threw off these glittering chains of affecta- 
tion. Dean Swift, by the very constitution of his 
mind, plain, sinewy, nervous, and courting only the 
strength that allies itself with homeliness, was always 
indisposed to this mode of correspondence. And, 
finally, Pope himself, as his earlier friends died off, and 
his own understanding acquired strength, laid it aside 
altogether. One reason doubtless was, that he found 
it too fatiguing ; since in this way of letter- writing he 
was put to as much expense of wit in amusing an indi- 
vidual correspondent, as would for an equal extent 
have sufficed to delight the whole world. A funambu- 
list may harass his muscles and risk his neck on the 
tight-rope, but hardly to entertain his own family. 
Pope, however, had another reason for declining this 
showy system of fencing ; and strange it is that he had 
not discovered this reason from the very first. As life 
advanced, it happened unavoidably that real business 
advanced ; the careless condition of youth prompted 
no topics, or at least prescribed none, but such as were 
agreeable to the taste, and allowed of an ornamental 
coloring. But when downright business occurred, 
exchequer bills to be sold, meetings to be arranged, 
negotiations confided, difficulties to be explained, here 
and there by possibility a jest or two might be scat- 
tered, a witty illusion thrown in, or a sentiment inter- 
woven ; but for the main body of the case, t neithe* 



126 POPE 

could receive any ornamental treatment, nor if by any 
effort of ingenuity, it had, could it look otherwise tnan 
silly and unreasonable : 

• Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri.' 

Pope's idleness, therefore, on the one hand, concur- 
ring with good sense and the necessities of business en 
the other, drove him to quit his gay rhetoric in letter- 
writing. But there are passages surviving in his 
correspondence which indicate, that, after all, had 
leisure and the coarse perplexities of life permitted it, 
he still looked with partiality upon his youthful style, 
and cherished it as a first love. But in this harsh 
world, as the course of true love, so that of rhetoric, 
never did run smooth ; and thus it hajDpened that, with 
a lingering farewell, he felt himself forced to bid it 
adieu. Strange that any man should think his own 
sincere and confidential overflowings of thought and 
feeling upon books, men, and public affairs, less 
valuable in a literary view than the legerdemain of 
throwing up bubbles into the air for the sake of watch- 
ing their prismatic hues, like an Indian juggler with his 
cups and balls. "We of this age, who have formed our 
notions of epistolary excellence from the chastity of 
Gray's, the brilliancy of Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
tagu's during her later life, and the mingled good sense 
and fine feelings of Cowper's, value only those letters 
of Pope which he himself thought of inferior value, 
.^nd even with regard to these, we may say that there 
is a great mistake made ; the best of those later letters 
between Pope and Swift, &c., are not in themselves at 
all superior to the letters of sensible and accomplished 
women, such as leave every town in the island by 



POPE. 1S,7 

e'serj- post. Their chief interest is a derivative one ; 
wo arc pleased with any letter, good or bad, which 
relates to men of such eminent talent ; and sometimes 
the subjects discussed have a separate interest for 
themselves. But as to the quality of the discussion, 
ajjart from the person discussing and the thing dis- 
cussed, so. trivial is the value of these letters in a large 
proportion, that Ave cannot but wonder at the preposter- 
ous value which was set upon them by the writers.^ 
Pope especially ovight not to have his ethereal works 
loaded by the mass of trivial prose which is usually 
attached to them. 

This correspondence, meantime, with the wits of the 
time, though one mode by which, in the absence of 
reviews, the reputation of an author was spread, did 
not perhaps serve the interests of Pope so effectually 
as the poems which iti this way he circulated in those 
classes of English society whose favor he chiefly 
courted. One of his friends, the truly kind and ac- 
comjilished Sir William Trumbull, served him in that 
way, and perhaps in another eventually even more 
important. The library of Pope's father was composed 
exclusively of polemical divinity, a proof, by the way, 
that he was not a blind convert to the Roman Catholic 
faith ; or, if he was so originally, had reviewed the 
grounds of it, and adhered to it after strenuous study. 
In this dearth of books at his own home, and until he 
was able to influence his father in buying more exten- 
sively, Pope had benefited by the loans of his friends ; 
amongst whom it is probable that Sir William, as one 
of the best scholars of the whole, might assist hirii 
most. He certainly offered him the most touching 
compliment, as it was also the a\ isest and most paterna] 



128 POPE. 

counsel, when lie besought him as one gorldess-loiti, 
to quit the convivial society of deep drinkers : 

' Heu, fuge nate dea, teque his, ait, eripe malis.' 

With these aids from friends of rank, and his way 
thus laid open to public favor, in the year 1709 Pope 
first came forward upon the stage of literature. The 
same year which terminated his legal minority intro- 
duced him to the public. Miscellanies in those days 
were almost periodical repositories of fugitive verse. 
Tonson happened at this time to be publishing one of 
some extent, the sixth volume of which offered a sort 
of ambush to the young aspirant of Windsor Forest, 
from which he might watch the public feeling. The 
volume was opened by Mr. Ambrose Philips, in the 
character of pastoral poet ; and in thp same character, 
but stationed at . the end of the volume, and thus 
covered by his bucolic leader, as a soldier to the rear 
by the file in advance, appeared Pope ; so that he 
might win a little public notice, without too much 
seeming to challenge it. This half-clandestine emer- 
sion upon the stage of authorship, and his furtive 
position, are both mentioned by Pope as accidents, bi;t 
as accidents in which he rejoiced, and not improbably 
accidents which Tonson had arranged with a view to 
his satisfaction. 

It must appear strange that Pope at twenty-one 
should choose to come forward for the first time with a 
work composed at sixteen. A difference of five years 
at that stage of life is of more effect than of twenty at 
a later ; and his own expanding judgment could hardly 
fail to inform him, that his Pastorals were by far the 
worst of his works. In reality, let us not deny, thai 
had Pope never written any thing else, his name woi Id 



POPE. 129 

not have been known as a name even of promise, but 
would probably have been redeemed from oblivion by 
some satirist or writer of a Dunciad. Were a man to 
meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, 
viz., ' Love out of Mount Mtna hy Whirlwind,' he 
would suppose himself reading the Racing Calendar. 
Yet this hybrid creature is one of the many zoological 
monsters to whom the Pastorals introduce us : 

• I know thee, love ! on foreign mountains bred, 
"Wolves gave thee suck, anil savage tigers fed. 
Thou wert from Etna's burning entrails torn, 
Got by fierce whirlwinds, and in thunder born.' 

But the very names ' Damon ' and ' Strephon,' ' Phillis ' 
and ' Delia,' are rank with childishness. Arcadian 
life is, at the best, a feeble conception, and rests upon 
the false principle of crowding together all the luscious 
sweets of rural life, undignified by the danger which 
attends pastoral life in our climate, and unrelieved by 
shades, either moral or physical. And the Arcadia of 
Pope's age was the spurious Arcadia of the opera 
theatre, and, what is worse, of the French opera. 

The hostilities which followed between these rival 
wooers of the pastoral muse are well known. Pope, 
irritated at what he conceived the partiality shown to 
Philips in the Guardian, pursued the review ironically - 
and, whilst affecting to load his antagonist with praises 
draws into pointed relief some of his most flagrant 
faults. The result, however, we cannot believe. That 
all the wits, except Addison, were duped by the irony, 
is quite impossible. Could any man of sense mistake 
for praise the remark, that Philips had imitated ' every 
line of Strada ; ' that he had introduced wolves into 
England, and proved himself the first of gardeners by 



130 POPE. 

making his flowers ' blow all in the same season.' 
Or, suppose those passages unnoticed, could the broda 
sneer esc8,pe him, where Pope taxes the other writer 
fviz., himself) with having deviated ' into downright 
poetry ; ' or the outrageous ridicule of Philips's style, 
as setting up for the ideal type of the pastoral style, 
the quotation from Gay, beginning, 

• Rager, go vetch the kee, or else the zun 
Will quite bego before ch' 'avs half a don ! ' 

Philips is said to have resented this treatment by 
threats of personal chastisement to Pope, and even 
hanging up a rod at Button's coffee-house. We may 
be certain that Philips never disgraced himself by such 
ignoble conduct. If the public indeed were universally 
duped by the paper, what motive had Philips for re- 
sentment ? Or, in any case, what plea had he for 
attacking Pope, who had not come forward as the 
author of the essay ? But, from Pope's confidential 
account of the matter, we know that Philips saw him 
daily, and never offered him ' any indecorum ; ' though, 
for some cause or other, Pope pursued Philips with 
virulence through life. 

In the year 1711, Pope published his Essay on 
Criticism, which some people have very unreasonably 
fancied his best performance ; and in the same year 
his Rape of the Lock, the most exquisite monument 
of playful fancy that universal literature ofi'ers. It 
wanted, however, as yet, the principle of its vitality, 
in wanting the machinery of sylphs and gnomes, with 
which addition it was first published in 1714. 

In the year 1712, Pope appeared again before the 
public as the author of the Temple of Fame, and the 
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. Much 



POPE. 131 

speculation has arisen on the question concerning the 
name of this lady, and the more interesting question 
concerning the nature of the persecutions and mis- 
fortunes which she suffered. Pope appears purposely 
to decline answering the questions of his friends upon 
that point ; at least the questions have reached us, and 
the answers have not. Joseph Warton supjoosed him- 
self to have ascertained four facts about her : that her 
name was Wainsbury ; that she was deformed in 
person ; that she retired into a convent from some 
circumstances connected with an attachment to a 
young man of inferior rank ; and that she killed her- 
self, not by a sword, as the poet insinuates, but by a 
halter. As to the latter statement, it may very possi- 
bly be true ; such a change would be a very slight 
exercise of the poet's privileges. As to the rest, there 
are scarcely grounds enough for an opinion. Pope 
certainly speaks of her under the name of Mrs. (^. e 
Miss) W , which at least argues a poetical exag- 
geration in describing her as a being ' that once had 
titles, honor, wealth, and fame ; ' and he may as much 
have exaggerated her pretensions to beauty. It is 
indeed noticeable, that he speaks simply of her decent 
limbs, which, in any English use of the word, does not 
imply much enthusiasm of praise. She appears to 

have been the niece of a Lady A ; and Mr. 

Craggs, afterwards secretary of state, wrote to Lady 

A on her behalf, and otherwise took an interest in 

her fate. As to her being a relative of the Duke of 
Buckingham's, that rests upon a mere conjectural 
interpretation applied to a letter of that nobleman's. 
But all things about this unhappy lady are as yet 
enveloped in mystery. And not the least part of the 



132 poiE. 

■mystery is a letter of Pope*s to a Mr. C , 'bearmor 

date 1732, that is, just twenty years after the ])ublica- 
tion of the poem, in which Pope, in a manly tone, 
justifies himself for his estrangement, and presses 
against his unknown correspondent the very blame 
which he had applied generally to the kinsman of the 
poor victim in 1712. Now, unless, there is some mis- 
take in the date, how are we to explain this gentle- 
man's long lethargy, and his sudden sensibility to 
Pope's anathema, with which the world has resounded 
for twenty years ? 

Pope had now established his reputation with the 
public as the legitimate successor and heir to the 
poetical supremacy of Dryden. His Rape of the 
Lock was unrivalled in ancient or modern literature, 
and the time had now arrived when, instead of seeking 
to extend his fame, he might count upon a pretty 
general support in applying what he had already 
established to the promotion of his own interest. Ac- 
cordingly, in the autumn of 1713, he formed a final 
resolution of undertaking a new translation of the 
Iliad. It must be observed, that already in 1709, 
concurrently with his Pastorals, he had published 
specimens of such a translation ; and these had been 
communicated to his friends some time before. In 
particular. Sir William Trumbull, on the 9th of April, 
170S, urged upon Pope a complete translation of both 
Iliad and Odyssey. Defective skill in the Greek 
language, exaggeration of the difficulties, and the 
timidity of a writer as yet unknown, and not quite 
twenty years old, restrained Pope for five years and 
more. What he had practised as a sort of hravura, 
for a single eff'ort of display, he recoiled from as a 



roPE. 133 

daily task to be pursued through much toil, and a con- 
siderable section of his life. However, he dallied with 
the purpose, starting difficulties in the temper of one 
who wishes to hear them undervalued ; until at length 
•Sir Richard Steele determined him to the undertaking, 
4. fact overlooked by the biographer, but which is 
ascertained by Ayre's account of that interview be- 
tween Pope and Addison, probably in 1716, which 
scaled the rupture between them. In the autumn of 
1713, he made his design known amongst his friends. 
Accordingly, on the 21st of October, we have Lord 
Lansdown's letter, expressing his great pleasure at the 
communication ; on the 2Cth we have Addison's letter 
encouraging him to the task ; and in November of the 
same year occurs the amusing scene so graphically 
described by Bishop Kennet, when Dean Swift pre- 
sided in the conversation, and, amongst other indica- 
tions of his conscious authority, ' instructed a young 
nobleman, that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope, 
who had begun a translation of Homer into English 
verse, for which he must have them all subscribe ; 
for,' says he, ' the author shall not begin to print until 
I have a thousand guineas for him.' 

If this Avere the extent of what Swift anticipated 
from the work, he fell miserably below the result. 
But, perhaps, he spoke only of a cautionary arrha or 
earnest. As this was unquestionably the greatest 
literary labor, as to profit, ever executed, not excepting 
the most lucrative of Sir Walter Scott's, if due allow- 
ance be made for the altered value of money, and if 
we consider the Odyssey as forming part of the labor, 
it may be right to state the particulars of Pope's con- 
tract with Lintot. 



Iii4 POPE. 

The number of subscribers to the Iliad was 574, and 
tbe number of copies subscribed for was 654. The 
work was to be printed in six quarto volumes ; and the 
subscription was a guinea a volume. Consequently by 
the subscription Pope obtained six times 654 guineas, 
or £4218 6s., (for the guinea then passed for 21s. 
6d.) ; and for the copyright of each volume Lintot 
offered £200, consequently £1200 for the whole six; 
so that from the Iliad the profit exactly amounted to 
£5310 16s. Of the Odyssey, 574 copies were sub- 
scribed for. It was to be printed in five quarto 
volumes, and the subscription was a guinea a volume. 
Consequently by the subscription Poj^e obtained five 
times 574 guineas, or £3085 5s. ; and for the copy- 
right Lintot offered £600. The total sv;m received, 
therefore, by Pope, on account of the Odyssey, was, 
£3685 5s. But in this instance he had two coadju- 
tors, Broome and Fenton ; between them they trans- 
lated twelve books, leaving twelve to Pope. The notes 
also were compiled by Broome ; but the postscript to 
the notes was written by Pope. Fenton received £300, 
Broome £500. Such at least is Warton's account, and 
more probable than that of Ruff head, who not only 
varies the proportions, but increases the whole sum 
given to the assistants by £100. Thus far we had 
followed the guidance of mere probabilities, as they lie 
upon the face of the transaction. But we have since 
detected a written statement of Pope's, unaccountably 
overlooked by the biographers, and serving of. itself to 
show how negligently they have read the works of their 
illustrious subject. The statement is entitled to the 
fullest attention and confidence, not being a hasty or 
casual notice of the transaction, but pointedly shaped 



POPE. 135 

lo meet a calumnious rumor against Pope in his char- 
acter of paymaster ; as if he who had found so much 
liberality from publishers in his own person, were 
niggardly or unjust as soon as he assumed those rela- 
tions to others. Broome, it v^as alleged, had expressed 
himself dissatisfied with Pope's remuneration. Per- 
haps he had. For he would be likely to frame his 
estimate for his own services from the scale of Pope's 
reputed gains ; and those gains would, at any rate, be 
enormously exaggerated, as uniformly happens where 
there is a basis of the marvellous to begin with. And, 
secondly, it would be natural enough to assume the 
previous result from the Iliad as a fair standard for 
computation ; but in this, as we know, all parties found 
themselves disappointed, and Broome had the less 
right to murmur at this, since the agreement with 
himself as chief journeyman in the job was one main 
cause of the disappointment. There was also another 
reason why Broome should be less satisfied than Fen- 
ton. Verse for verse, any one thousand lines of a 
translation so purely mechanical might stand against 
any other thousand ; and so far the equation of claims 
was easy. A book-keeper, with a pen behind his ear, 
and Cocker's Golden Rule open before him, could do 
full justice to Mr. Broome as a poet every Saturday 
night. But Broome had a separate account current for 
pure prose against Pope. One he had in conjunction 
with Fenton for verses delivered on the premises at so 
much per hundred, on which there could be no demur, 
except as to the allowance for tare and tret as a 
discount in favor of Pope. But the prose account, 
the account for notes, requiring very various degrees 
of reading and research, allowed of no such easy 



136 



equation. There it was, we conceive, that Broome's 
discontent arose. Pope, however, declares that he 
had given him £500, thus confirming the proportions 
of War ton against Ruff head, (that is, in effect, War- 
burton,) and some other advantages which were not in 
money, nor deductions at all from his own money 
profits, but which may have been worth so much 
money to Broome, as to give some colorable truth to 
Ruff head's allegation of an additional £100. In direct 
money, it remains certain that Fenton had three, and 
Broome five hundred pounds. It follows, therefore, 
that for the Iliad and Odyssey jointly he received a 
sum of £8996 Is., and paid for assistance £800, 
which leaves to himself a clear sum of £8196 Is. 
And, in fact, his profits ought to be calculated without 
deduction, since it was his own choice, from indolence, 
to purchase assistance. 

The Iliad was commenced about October, 1713. In 
the summer of the following year he was so far ad- 
vanced as to begin making arrangements with Lintot 
for the printing ; and the first two books, in manu- 
script, were jDut into the hands of Lord Halifax. In 
June, 1715, between the 10th and 28th, the subscribers 
received their copies of the first volume ; and in July 
Lintot began to publish that volume generally. Some 
readers will inquire, who paid for the printing and 
paper, &;c. ? All this expense fell upon Lintot, for 
whom Pope was superfluously anxious. The sagacious 
bookseller understood what he was about ; and, when 
a pirated edition was published in Holland, he counter- 
acted the injury by printing a cheap edition, of which 
7500 copies Avere sold in a few weeks ; an extraordi- 
nary proof of the extended interest in literature. The 



137 



Bccon.l, third, and fourth volumes of the Iliafl, each 
containing, like the first, four books, were published 
successively in 1716, 1717, 1718 ; and in 1720, Pope 
completed the work by publishing the fifth volume, 
containing five books, and the sixth, containing the 
last three, with the requisite supplementary apparatus. 
The Odyssey was commenced in 1723, (not 1722, 
as Mr. Roscoe virtually asserts at p. 259,) and the 
publication of it was finished in 1725. The sale, 
however, was much inferior to that of the Iliad ; for 
which more reasons than one might be assigned. But 
there can be no doubt that Pope himself depreciated 
the work, by his undignified arrangements for working 
by subordinate hands. Such a process may answer in 
sculpture, because there a quantity of rough-hewing 
occurs, which can no more be improved by committing 
it to a Phidias, than a common shop-bill could ^^e 
improved in its arithmetic by Sir Isaac Newton. But 
in literature such arrangements arc degrading ; and 
above all, in a work which was but too much exposed 
already to. the presumption of being a mere effort of 
mechanic skill, or (as Curll said to the House of Lords) 
' a knack ; ' it was deliberately helping forward that 
idea to let off" parts of the labor. Only think of 
Milton letting off" by contract to the lowest offer, and tt 
be delivered by such a day, (for which good security 
to be found,) six books of Paradise Lost. It is triw? 
tlie great dramatic authors were often collaborateurs 
but their case was essentially diff'erent. The loss, 
however, fell not upon Pope, but upon Lintot, who, on 
this occasion, was out of temper, and talked rather 
broadly of j^rosecution. But that was out of the ques- 
tion. Pope had acted indiscreetly, but nothing could 
12 



138 POPE. 

be alleged against his honor ; for he had expressly 
warned the public, that he did not, as in the other case, 
profess to translate, but to under take^^ a translation 
of the Odyssey. Lintot, however, was no loser, abso- 
lutely, though he might be so in relation to his expec- 
tations ; on the contrary, he grew rich, bought land, 
and became sheriff of the county in which his estates 
lay. 

We have pursued the Homeric labors uninterrupted- 
ly from their commencement in 1713, till their final 
termination in 1725, a period of twelve years or 
nearly ; because this was the task to which Pope owed 
the dignity, if not the comforts of his life, since it was 
this Avhich enabled him to decline a pension from all 
administrations, and even from his friend Craggs, the 
secretary, to decline the express off"er of £300 per 
annum. Indeed Pope is always proud to own his 
obligations to Homer. In the interval, however, be- 
tween the Iliad and the Odyssey, Pope listened to 
proposals made by Jacob Tonson, that he should revise 
an edition of Shakspeaxe. For this, which was in fact 
the first attempt at establishing the text of the mighty 
poet. Pope obtained but little money, and still less 
reputation. He received, according to tradition, only 
£217 \2s. for his trouble of collation, which must 
have been considerable, and some other trifling edito- 
rial labor. And the opinion of all judges, from the 
first so unfavorable as to have depreciated the money- 
value of the book enormously perhaps from a prepos- 
Bcssion of the public mind against the fitness of Pope 
for executing the dull labors of revision, has ever since 
pronounced this work the very worst edition in exist- 
ence. For the edition we have little to plead ; but fol 



POPE. 139 

the editor it is but just to make three apologies. In 
the Jirst place, he wrote a brilliant preface, which, 
although (like other works of the same class) too much 
occupied in displaying his own ability, and too often, 
for the sake of an eflfective antithesis, doing deep in- 
justice to Shakspeare, yet undoubtedly, as a whole, 
extended his fame, by giving the sanction and coun- 
tersign of a great wit to the national admiration. 
Secondly, as Dr. Johnson admits, Pope's failure point-ed 
out the right road to his successors. Thirdly, even in 
this failure it is but fair to say, that in a graduated 
scale of merit, as distributed amongst the long succes- 
sion of editors through that century. Pope holds a rank 
proportionable to his age. For the year 1720, he is 
no otherwise below Theobald, Hanmer, Capell, War- 
burton, or even Johnson, than as they are successively 
below each other, and all of them as to accuracy 
below Steevens, as he again was below Malone and 
Reed. 

The gains from Shakspeare would hardly counter- 
balance the loss which Pope sustained this year from 
the South Sea Bubble. One thing, by the way, is still 
unaccountably neglected by writers on this question. 
How it was that the great Mississippi Bubble, during 
the Orleans regency in Paris, should have happened to 
coincide with that of London. If this were accident, 
how marvellous that the same insanity should possess 
the two great capitals of Christendom in the same 
year ! If, again, it were not accident, but due to some 
common cause, why is not that cause explained ? 
Pope to his nearest friends never stated the amount of 
his loss. The biographers report that at one time hia 
stock was worth from twenty to thirty thousand pounds 



140 POPE. 

But tliat was quite impossible. It is true, tliat as the 
stock rose at one time a thousand per cent., this would 
not imply on Pope's part an original purchase beyond 
t\venty-five hundred pounds or thereabouts. But Pope 
has furnished an argument against that, which we shall 
improve. He quotes more than once, as applicable to 
his own case, the old proverbial riddle of Hesiod, 
nXiov i,uiav navroQ, the half is more than the whole. 
What did he mean by that ? We understand it thus : 
That between the selling and buying, the variations 
had been such as to sink his shares to one half of the 
price they had once reached, but, even at that depreci- 
ation, to leave him richer on selling out than he had 
been at first. But the half of c£25,000 would be a far 
larger sum than Pope could have ventured to risk upon 
a fund confessedly liable to daily fluctuation. £'3000 
would be the utmost he could risk ; in which case the 
half of £25,000 would have left him so very much 
richer, that he would have proclaimed his good fortune 
as an evidence of his skill and prudence. Yet, on the 
contrary, he wished his friends to understand at times 
that he had lost. But his friends forgot to ask one 
important question : Was the word loss to be under- 
stood in relation to the imaginary and nominal wealth 
which he once possessed, or in relation to the absolute 
sum invested in the South Sea fund ? The truth is, 
Pope practised on this, as on other occasions, a little 
finessing, which is the chief foible in his character. 
His object was, that, according to circumstances, he 
might vindicate his own freedom from the common 
mania, in case his enemies should take that handle for 
attacking him ; or might have it in his power to plead 
poverty, and to account for it, in case he should over 



POPE. 141 

accept tliat pension which had been so often tendered 
but never sternly rejected. 

In 1723 Pope lost one of his dearest friends, Bishop 
Atterbury, by banishment ; a sentence most justly in- 
curred, and mercifully mitigated by the hostile "Whig 
government. On the bishop's trial a circumstance 
occurred to Pope which flagrantly corroborated his own 
belief in his natural disqualification for public life. 
He was summoned as an evidence on his friend's 
behalf. He had but a dozen words to say, simply 
explaining the general tenor of his lordship's behavior 
at Bromley, and yet, under this trivial task, though 
supported by the enthusiasm of his friendship, he 
broke down. Lord Bolingbroke, returning from exile, 
met the bishop at the sea-side ; upon which it was 
wittily remarked that they were ' exchanged.' Lord 
Bolingbroke supplied to Pope the place, or perhaps 
more than supplied the place, of the friend he had 
lost ; for Bolingbroke was a free-thinker, and so far 
more entertaining to Pope, even whilst partially dis- 
senting, than Atterbury, whose clerical profession laid 
him under restraints of decorum, and latterly, there is 
reason to think, of conscience. 

In 1725, on closing the Odyssey, Pope announces 
his intention to Swift of quitting the labors of a trans- 
lator, and thenceforwards applying himself to original 
composition. This resolution led to the Essay on Man, 
which appeared soon afterwards ; and, with the excep- 
tion of two labors, which occupied Pope in the interval 
between 1726 and 1729, the rest of his life may 
properly be described as dedicated to the further exten- 
Bion of that Essay. The two works which he inter- 
posed were a collection of the fugitive papers, whethe* 



142 POPE. 

prose or verse, which, he and Dean Swift had scattered 
amongst their friends at different periods of life. The 
avowed motive for this publication, and, in fact, the 
secret motive, as disclosed in Pope's confidential 
letters, was to make it impossible thenceforwards for 
piratical publishers like Curll. Both Poj^e and Swift 
dreaded the malice of Curll in case thej' should die 
before him. It was one of Curll's regular artifices to 
publish a heap of trash on the death of any eminent 
man, under the title of his Remains ; and in allusion 
to that practice, it was that Arbuthnot most wittily- 
called Curll ' one of the new terrors of death.' By 
publishing all, Pope would have disarmed Curll before- 
hand ; and that Avas in fact the purpose ; and that pie* 
only could be offered by two grave authors, one forty, 
the other sixty years old, for reprinting jeux d'esprit, 
that never had any other apology than the youth of 
their authors. Yet, strange to say, after all, some 
were omitted ; and the omission of one opened the 
door to Curll as well as that of a score. Let Curll 
have once inserted the narrow end of the wedge, he 
would soon have driven it home. 

This Miscellany, however, in three volumes, (pub- 
lished in 1727, but afterwards increased by a fourth in 
1732,) though in itself a trifling work, had one vast 
consequence. It drew after it swarms of libels and 
lampoons, levelled almost exclusively at Pope, although 
the cipher of the joint authors stood entwined upon 
the title-page. These libels in their turn produced a 
second reaction ; and, by stimulating Pope to effectual 
anger, eventually drew forth, for the everlasting admi- 
ration of posterity, the very greatest of Pope's works ; 
a monument of satirical power the greatest which mat) 



143 



iias produced, not excepting the MacFleckno of Dry- 
den, namely, the immortal Dunciad. 

In October of the year 1727, this poem, in its 
original form, was completed. Many editions, not 
spurious altogether, nor surreptitious, but with some 
connivance, not yet explained, from Pope, were printed 
in Dublin and in London. But the first quarto and 
acknowledged edition was published in London early 
in '1728-9,' as the editors choose to write it, that 
is, (without perplexing the reader,) in 1729. On 
March 12th of which year it was presented by the 
prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, to the king and 
queen at St. James's. 

Like a hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the 
wound, and afterwards to languish away. Pope felt so 
greatly exhausted by the efforts connected with the 
Dunciad, (which are far greater, in fact, than all his 
Homeric labors put together,) that he prepared his 
friends to expect for the future only an indolent com- 
panion and a hermit. Events rapidly succeeded which 
tended to strengthen the impression he had conceived 
of his own decay, and certainly to increase his disgust 
with the world. In 1732 died his friend Atterbury ; 
and on December the 7th of the same year Gay, the 
most unpretending of all the wits whom he knew, and 
the one with whom he had at one time been domesti- 
cated, expired, after an illness of three days, which 
Dr. Arbuthnot declares to have been ' the most precipi- 
tate ' he ever knew. But in fact Gay had long been 
decaying from the ignoble vice of too much and too 
luxurious eating. Six months after this loss, which 
greatly affected Pope, came the last deadly wound 
wliich this life could inflict, in the death of his mother. 



144 POPE. 

She had for some time been in her dotage, and recog- 
nized no face but that of her son, so that her death 
was not unexpected ; but that circumstance did not 
soften the blow of separation to Pope. She died on 
the 7th of June, 1733, being then ninety-three years 
old. Three days after, writing to Richardson, the 
painter, for the purpose of urging him to come down 
and take her portrait before the coffin was closed, ho 
says, ' I thank God, her death was as easy as her life 
was innocent ; and as it cost her not a groan, nor even 
a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an 
expression of tranquillity,' that ' it Avould afford the 
finest image of a saint expired that ever painting drew. 
Adieu, may you die as happily.' The funeral took 
place on the 1 1th ; Pope then quitted the house, unable 
to support the silence of her chamber, and did not 
return for months, nor in fact ever reconciled himself 
to the sight of her vacant apartment. 

Swift also he had virtually lost for ever. In April, 
1727, this unhappy man had visited Pope for the las< 
time. During this visit occurred the death of George I, 
Great expectations arose from that event amongst the 
Tories, in which, of course. Swift shared. It was 
reckoned upon as a thing of course that Walpole 
would be dismissed. But this bright gleam of hope 
proved as treacherous as all before ; and the anguish 
of this final disappointment perhaps it was which 
brought on a violent attack of Swift's constitutional 
malady. On the last of August he quitted Pope's 
house abruptly, concealed himself in London, and 
iinally quitted it, as stealthily as he had before quitted 
Twickenham, for Ireland, never more to return. He 
left a most affectionate letter for Pope ; but his afflic- 



TOVE. 145 

lion and his gloomy anticipations of insanity, were too 
oppressive to allow of liis seeking a personal interview. 
rarps might now describe himself pretty nearly as 
uUiikus suorum ; and if he would have friends in 
future, he must seek them, as he complains bitterly, 
almost amongst strangers and another generation. 
This sense of desolation may account for the acrimony 
which too much disfigures his writings henceforward. 
Between 1732 and 1740, he was chiefly engaged in 
satires, which uniformly speak a higix moral tone in 
the midst of personal invective ; or in poems directly 
philosophical, which almost as uniformly speak the 
bitter tone of satire in the midst of dispassionate ethics. 
His Essay on Man was but one link in a general 
course which he had projected of moral philosophy, 
here and there pursuing his themes into the fields of 
metaphysics, but no farther in either field of morals or 
metaphysics than he could make compatible with a 
poetical treatment. These works, however, naturally 
entangled him in feuds of various complexions Avith 
people of very various pretensions ; and to admirers 
of Pope so fervent as we profess ourselves, it is painful 
to acknowledge that the dignity of his latter years, and 
the becoming tranquillity of increasing age, are sadly 
disturbed by the petulance and the tone of irritation 
■which, alike to those in the wrong and in the right, 
inevitably besiege all personal disputes. He was agi- 
tated, besides, by a piratical publication of his coi'res- 
pondence. This emanated, of course, from the den 
of Curll, the universal robber and ' Matant least ' of 
those days ; and, besides the injury offered to his 
feelings by exposing some youthful sallies which he 
wished to have suppressed, it drew upon him a far 
13 



115 POPE. 

more disgraceful imputation, most assuredly unfounded, 
but accredited by Dr. Johnson, and consequently in full 
currency to this day, of having acted collusively with 
Curll, or at least through Curll, for the publication of 
what he wished the world to see, but could not else 
have devised any decent pretext for exhibiting. The 
disturbance of his mind on this occasion led to a cir- 
cular request, dispersed among his friends, that tliey 
would return his letters. All complied except Swift. 
Hr only delayed, and in fact shuffled. But it is easy 
to read in his evasions, and Pope, in spite of his vexa- 
tion, read the same tale, viz., that, in consequence of 
his recurring attacks and increasing misery, he was 
himself the victim of artifices amongst those who 
surrounded him. What Pope apprehended happened. 
The letters were all published in Dublin and in Lon- 
don, the originals being then only returned when they 
had done their work of exposure. 

Such a tenor of life, so constantly fretted by petty 
wrongs, or by leaden insults, to which only the celeb- 
rity of their object lent force or wings, alloAved little 
opportunity to Pope for recalling his powers from 
angry themes, and converging them upon others of 
more catholic philosophy. To the last he continued to 
conceal vipers beneath his flowers ; or rather, speaking 
proportionately to the case, he continued to sheath 
amongst the gleaming but innocuous lightnings of his 
departing splendors, the thunderbolts which blasted for 
ever. His last appearance was his greatest. In 1 742 
he published the fourth book of the Dunciad ; to which 
it has with much reason been objected, that it stands in 
no obvious relation to the other three, but which, taken 
as s separate whole, is by far the most brilliant and the 



weightiest of his works. Pope was aware of the 
h atus between this last book and the rest, on which 
account he sometimes called it the greater Dunciad ; 
and it would have been easy for him, with a shallow 
Warburtonian ingenuity to invep.t links that might 
have satisfied a mere verbal sense of connection. But 
he disdained this puerile expedient. The fact w*s, 
and could not be disguised from any penetrating eye, 
that the poem was not a pursuit of the former subjects; 
it had arisen spontaneously at various times, by looking 
at the same general theme of dulness, (which, in 
Pope-'s sense, includes all aberrations of the intellect, 
nay, even any defective equilibrium amongst the 
faculties,) under a different angle of observation, and 
from a different centre. In this closing book, not only 
bad authors, as in the other three, but all abuses of 
science or antiquarian knowledge, or counoisseurship 
in the arts, are attacked. Virtuosi, medalists, butterfly- 
hunters, florists, erring metaphysicians, &c., are all 
pierced through and through as with the shafts of 
Apollo. But the imperfect plan of the work as to its 
internal economy, no less than its exterior relations, is 
evident in many places ; and in particular the whole 
catastrophe of the poem, if it can be so called, is 
linked to the rest by a most insufficient incident. To 
give a closing grandeur to his work. Pope had con- 
ceived the idea of representing the earth as lying 
universally under the incubation of one mighty spirit 
of dulness ; a sort of millennium, as we may call it, 
for ignorance, error, and stupidity. This would take 
leave of the reader with effect ; but how was it to be 
introduced ? at what era ? under what exciting cause ? 
As to the eras, Pope could not settle that ; unless it 



118 POl'E. 

wore a future era, the description of it could not be 
delivered as a prophecy ; and, not being prophetic, it 
would want much of its grandeur. Yet as a part of 
futuritjr, how is it connected with our present times ? 
Do they and their pursuits lead to it as a possibility, or 
as a contingency upon certain habits which we have it 
in our power to eradicate, (in which case this vision of 
dulness has a practical warning,) or is it a mere neces- 
sity, one amongst the many changes attached to the 
cycles of human destiny, or which chance brings 
round with the revolutions of its wheel ? All this 
Pope could not determine ; but the exciting cause he 
has determined, and it is preposterously below the 
effect. The goddess of dulness yawns ; and her 
yawn, which, after all, should rather express the fact 
and state of universal dulness than its cause, produces 
a change over all nations tantamount to a long eclipse. 
Meantime, with all its defects of plan, the poem, as to 
execution, is superior to all which Pope has done ; the 
composition is much superior to that of the Essay on 
Man, and more profoundly poetic. The parodies 
drawn from Milton, as also in the former books, have 
a beauty and eifect which cannot be expressed ; and if 
a young lady wished to cull for her album a passage 
from all Pope's writings, which, without a trace of 
irritation or acrimony, should yet present an exquisite 
gem of independent beauty, she could not find another 
passage equal to the little story of the florist and the 
butterfly-hunter. They plead their cause separately 
before the throne of dulness ; the florist telling how he 
had reared a superb carnation, which, in honor of the 
queen, he called Caroline, when his enemy, pursuing a 
butterfly which settled on the carnation, in securing his 



POPE. 149 

own object, had uestroyecl that of tlie plaintiff. The 
defendant replies with equal beauty ; and it may cer- 
tainly be affirmed, that, for brilliancy of coloring and 
the art of poetical narration, the tale is not surpassed 
by any in the language. 

This was the last effort of Pope worthy of separa'^e 
notice. He was now decaying rapidly, and sensible of 
his own d^cay. His complaint was a dropsy of the 
chest, and he knew it to be incurable. Under these 
circumstances, his behavior was admirably philoso- 
phical. He employed himself in revising and burnish- 
ing all his later work?, as those upon which he wisely 
relied for his reputation with future generations. In 
this task he was assisted by Dr. Warburton, a new 
literary friend, Avho had introduced himself to the 
favorable notice of Pope about four years before, by a 
defence of the Essay on Man, which Cronsaz had 
attacked, but in general indirectly and ineffectually, by 
attacking it through the blunders of a very faulty 
translation. This poem, however, still labors, to 
religious readers, under two capital defects. If man, 
according to Pope, is now so admirably placed in the 
universal system of things, that evil only could result 
from any change, then it seems to follow, either that 
a fall of man is inadmissible ; or at least, that, by 
placing him in his true centre, it had been a blessing 
universally. The other objection lies in this, that if 
all is right already, and in this earthly station, then 
one argument for a future state, as the scene in 
which evil is to be redressed, seems weakened or un- 
dermined. 

As the weakness of Pope increased, his nearest 
friends, Lord Bolingbroke, and a few others, gathered 



T50 POPE. 

around liim. The last scefies were passed almost with 
ease and tranquillity. He dined in company two days 
before he died ; and on the very day preceding his 
death he took an airing on Blackheath. A few morn- 
ings before he died, he was found very early in his 
library wriung on the immortality of the soul. This 
was an effort of delirium ; and he suffered otherwise 
from this affection of the brain, and from inability to 
think in his closing hours. But his humanity and 
goodness, it was remarked, had survived his intellec- 
tual faculties. He died on the 30th of May, 1744 ; and 
so quietly, that the attendants could not distinguish 
the exact moment of his dissolution. 

We had prepared an account of Pope's quarrels, in 
which we had shown that, generally, he was not the 
aggressor ; and often was atrociously ill used before 
he retorted. This service to Pope's memory Ave had 
judged important, because it is upon these quarrels 
chiefly that the erroneous opinion has built itself of 
Pope's fretfulness and irritability. And this vmamiable 
feature of his nature, together with a proneness to 
petty manoeuvring, are the main foibles that malice 
has been able to charge upon Pope's moral character. 
Yet, with no better foundation for their malignity than 
these doubtful propensities, of which the first perhaps 
was a constitutional defect, a defect of his tempera- 
ment rather than his will, and the second has been 
much exaggerated, many writers have taken upon 
themselves to treat Pope as a man, if not absolutely 
anprincipled and without moral sensibility, yet as 
mean, little-minded, indirect, splenetic, vindictive, and 
morose. Now the difference between ourselves and 
Ihese AVriters is fundamental. They fancy that in 



151 



Pope's character a basis of ignoble qualities was here 
and there slightly relieved by a few shining spots ; 
we, on the contrary, believe that in Pope lay a dis- 
position radically noble and generous, clouded and 
overshadowed by superficial foibles, or, to adopt the 
distinction of Shakspcare, they see nothing but ' dust a 
little gilt,' and we ' gold a little dusted.' A very rapid 
glance we will throw over the general outline of his 
character. 

As a friend, it is noticed emphatically by Martha 
Blount and other contemporaries, Avho must have had 
the best means of judging, that no man was so warm- 
hearted, or so much sacrificed himself for others, as 
Pope ; and in fact many of his quarrels grew out of 
this trait in his character. For once that he levelled 
his spear in his own quarrel, at least twice he did so 
on behalf of his insulted parents or his friends. Pope 
was also noticeable for the duration of his friend- 
ships ; " some dropped him, but he never any through- 
out his life. And let it be remembered, that amongst 
Pope's friends were the men of most eminent talents 
in those days ; so that envy at least, or jealousy of 
rival power, was assuredly no foible of his. In that 
respect how different from Addison, Avhose petty 
manoeuvring against Pope proceeded entirely from 
malignant jealousy. That Addison was more in the 
Avrong even than has generally been supposed, and 
Pope more thoroughly innocent as well as more gener- 
ous, we have the means at a proper opportunity of 
showing decisively. As a son, we need not insist on 
Pope's preeminent goodness. Dean Swift, who had 
lived for months together at Twickenham, declares that 
he had not only never witnessed, but had never heard 



152 POPE. 

of anything like it. As a Christian, Pope appears in 
a truly estimable light. He found himself a Roman 
Catholic by accident of birth ; so was his mother ; but 
tiis father was so upon personal conviction and conver- 
sion, yet not without extensive study of the questions 
at issue. It would have laid open the road to prefer- 
ment, and preferment was otherwise abundantly before 
him, if Pope would have gone over to the Protestant 
faith. And in his conscience he found no obstacle to 
that change ; he was a philosophical Christian, intol- 
erant of nothing but intolerance, a bigot only against 
bigots. But he remained true to his baptismal profes- 
sion, partly on a general principle of honor in adhering 
to a distressed and dishonored party, but chiefly out of 
reverence and affection to his mother. In his relation 
to women, Pope was amiable and gentlemanly ; and 
accordingly was the object of affectionate regard and 
admiration to many of the most accomplished in that 
sex. This we mention especially, because we would 
wish to express our full assent to the manly scorn with 
which ISIr. Roscoe repels the libellous insinuations 
against Pope and Miss Martha Blount. A more iniio- 
cent connection we do not believe ever existed. As 
an author, Warburton has recorded that no man ever 
displayed more candor or more docility to criticisms 
offered in a friendly spirit. Finally, we sum up all in 
saying, that Pope retained to the last a true and diffu- 
sive benignity ; that this was the quality which sur- 
vived all others, notwithstanding the bitter trial which 
his benignity must have stood through life, and the 
excitement to a spiteful reaction of feeling which 
was continually pressed ujDon him by the scorn and 



POPE. 153 

insult whicri his deformity drew upon him from the 
unworthy. 

But the moral character of Pope is of secondary 
interest. We are concerned with it only as connected 
with his great intellectual power. There are three 
errors which seem current upon this subject. First, 
that Pope drew his impulses from French literature ; 
secondly, that he was a poet of inferior rank ; thirdly, 
that his merit lies in superior ' correctness.' With 
respect to the first notion, it has prevailed by turns 
in every literature. One stage of society, in every 
nation, brings men of impassioned minds to the con- 
templation of manners, and of the social affections of 
man as exhibited in manners. With this propensity 
cooperates, no doubt, some degree of despondency 
when looking at the great models of the literature who 
have usually preoccupied the grander passions, and 
displayed their movements in the earlier periods of 
literature. Now it happens that the French, from an 
extraordinary defect in the higher qualities of passion, 
have attracted the notice of foreign nations chiefly to 
that field of their literature, in which the taste and 
the unimpassioned understanding preside. But in all 
nations such literature is a natural growth of the mind, 
and would arise equally if the French literature had 
never existed. The wits of Queen Anne's reign, or 
even of Charles II. 's, were not French by their taste 
or their imitation. Butler and Drydcn were surely 
not French ; and of Milton we need not speak ; as little 
was Pope French, either by his institution or by his 
models. Boileau he certainly admired too much ; and, 
for the sake of a poor parallelism with a passage about 
Greece in Horace, he has falsified history in the most 



154 POPE. 

ludicrous manner, without a shadow of countenance 
ftoni facts, in order to make our that we, like the 
Romans, received laws of taste from those whom we 
had conquered. But these are insulated cases and 
accidents, not to insist on his known and most pro- 
found admiration, often expressed, for both Chaucer, 
and Shakspeare, and Milton. Secondly, that Pope is to 
be classed as an inferior poet, has arisen purely from a 
vonfusion between the departments of poetry which he 
cultivated and the merit of his culture. The first place 
must undoubtedly be given for ever, — it cannot be 
refused, — to the impassioned movements of the tragic, 
and to the majestic movements of the epic muse. "\Ve 
cannot alter the relations of things out of favor to an 
individual. But in his own department, whether higher 
or lower, that man is supreme who has not yet been 
surpassed ; and such a man is Pope. As to the final 
notion, first started by Walsh, and propagated by 
Warton, it is the most absurd of all the three ; it is not 
from superior correctness that Pope is esteemed more 
correct, but because the compass and sweep of his 
performances lies more within the range of ordinary 
judgments. Many questions that have been raised 
upon Milton or Shakspeare, questions relating to so 
subtile a subject as the flux and reflux of human 
passion, lie far above the region of ordinary capacities ; 
and the indeterminateness or even carelessness of the 
judgment is transferred by a common confusion to its 
objects. But waiving this, let us ask, what is meant 
by ' correctness ? ' Correctness in what ? In develop- 
ing the thought ? In connecting it, or eff"ecting the 
transitions? In the use of words ? In the grammar? 
In the metre ? Under every one of these limitations 



POPE. 



155 



of tho idea, we maintain that Pope is not distinguished 
by correctness ; nay, that, as compared with Shak- 
speare, he is eminently incorrect. Produce us from 
any drama of Shakspeare one of those leadin- pas- 
."ages that all men have by heart, and show I, any 
eminent defect in the very sinews of the thou-ht It 
IS impossible; defects there may be, but thev will 
always be found irrelevant to the main central thouo-ht 
or to Its expression. N^w turn to Pope; the first 
striking passage which off-ers itself to our memory is 
the famous character of Addison, ending thus : 

' Wlio would uot laugh, if such a man there be, 
"Who but must weep, if Atticus were he ? ' 

Why must we laugh? Because we find a grotesque 
assembly of noble and ignoble qualities. Very well • 
but why then must we weep .^ Because .this assem- 
blage IS found actually existing in an eminent man of 
genius. Well, that is a good reason for weepin<. • we 
weep for the degradation of human nature. But then 
revolves the question, why must we laugh .> Because, 
11 the belonging to a man of genius were a sufficient 
reason for weeping, so much we know from the very 
first. The very first line says, ' Peace to all such. 
But were there one whose fires true genius kindles and 
fan- fame inspires?' Thus falls to the ground the 
whole antithesis of this famous character. We are to 
change our mood from laughter to tears upon a sudden 
discovery that the character belonged to a man of 
genius ; and this we had already known from the 
beginning. Match us this prodigious oversight in 
Shakspeare. Again, take the Essay on Criticism. It 
la a collection of independent maxims, tied together 



156 POPE. 

into a fasciculus by the printer, but having no natural 
order or h)gical dcpendenc)' ; generall}'^ so vague as to 
mean nothing. Like the general rules of justice, &c. 
in ethics, to which ever}' man assents ; but when the 
question comes about any practical case, is it just? 
the opinions fly asunder far as the poles. And, what 
is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no 
man so often as by Pope, and by Pope nowhere so 
often as in this very poem. As a single instance, he 
proscribes monosyllabic lines ; and in no English 
poem of any pretensions are there so many lines of 
that class as in this. We have counted above a score, 
and the last line of all is monosyllabic. 

Not, therefore, for superior correctness, but for 
qualities the very same as belong to his most dis- 
tinguished brethren, is Pope to be considered a great 
poet; for impassioned thinking, powerful description, 
pathetic reflection, brilliant narration. His character- 
istic difference is simply that he carried these powers 
into a diff'erent field, and moved chiefly amongst the 
social paths of men, and Adewed their characters as 
operating through their manners. And our obligations 
to him arise chiefly on this ground, that having already, 
in the persons of earlier poets, carried off" the palm in 
all the grander trials of intellectual strength, for the 
majesty of the epopee and the impassioned vehemence 
of the tragic drama, to Pope we owe it that we can 
now claim an equal preeminence in the sportive and 
aerial graces of the mock heroic and satiric muse; 
that in the Dunciad we possess a peculiar form of 
satire, in which (according to a plan unattempted by 
any other nation) we see alternately her festive smile 
and her gloomiest scowl ; that the grave good sense of 



157 



llie nalion has here found its brightest muTor ; ancl, 
finally, that through Pope the cycle of our poetry ig 
perfected and made orbicular, that from that day we 
might claim the laurel equally, whether for dignity or 
i^i-ace. 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 101. 

Dr. Johnson, however, and Joseph Warton, for reasons not 
stated, have placed his birth on the 22d. To this statement, aa 
opposed to that which comes from the personal friends of Pope, 
little attention is due. Ruflhead and Spence, upon such ques- 
tions, must always be of higher authority than Johnson and 
Warton, and a fortiori than Bowles. But it ought not to 
be concealed, though hitherto unnoticed by any person, that 
some doubt after all remains whether any of the biographers is 
right. An anonymous writer, contemporary with Pope, and evi- 
dently familiar with his personal history, declares that he was 
born on the 8th of June; and he connects it with an event that, 
having a public and a partisan interest, (the birth of that Prince 
of AVales, who was known twenty-seven years afterwards as the 
Pretender,) would serve to check his own recollections, and give 
them a collateral voucher. It is true he wrote for an ill-natured 
purpose ; but no purpose whatever could have been promoted by 
falsifying this particular date. What is still more noticeable, 
however. Pope himself puts a most emphatic negative upon all these 
statements. In a pathetic letter to a friend, when his attention 
could not have been wandering, for he is expressly insisting upon 
a sentiment which will find an echo in many a human heart, viz., 
that a birthday, though from habit usually celebrated as a festal 
day, too often is secretly a memorial of disappointment, and an 
anniversary of sorrowful meaning, he speaks of the very day on 
which he is then writing as his own birthday; and indeed what 
else could give any propriety to the passage ? Now the date of 
this letter is January 1, 1733. Surely Pope knew his own birth- 
day better than those who have adopted a random rumor without 
investigation 

[158] 



NOTES. 159 

But, ■whilst we are upon this subject, ive must caution the 
readers of Pope against too much reliance upon the chronological 
accuracy of his editors. Ml are scandalously careless ; and gen- 
erally they are faithless. Many allusions are left unnoticed, 
which a very little research would have illustrated; many facts 
arc omitted, even yet recoverable, which are essential to the just 
appreciation of Pope's satirical blows; and dates are constantly 
misstated. Mr. Roscoe is the most careful of Pope's editors; but 
even he is often wrong. For instance, he has taken the trouble 
to write a note upon Pope's humoi-ous report to Lord Burlingtou 
of his Oxford journey on horseback with Lintot; and this note 
involves a sheer impossibility. The letter is undated, except as 
to the month; and Mr. Roscoe directs the reader to supply 171-4 
as the true date, which is a gross anachronism. For a ludicrous 
anecdote is there put into Linton's mouth, representing some 
angry critic, who had been turning over Pope's Homer, with fre- 
quent pshaws, as having been propitiated, by Mr. Lintot's dinner, 
into a gentler feeling towards Pope, and, finally, by the mere effect 
of good cheer, without an effort on the publisher's part, as coming 
to a confession, that what he ate and what he had been reading 
were equally excellent. But in the year 1714, no part of Pope's 
Homer was printed; June, 1715, was the month in which even 
the subscribers first received the four eai-liest books of the Iliad ; 
and the public generally not until July. This we notice by way 
of specimen ; in itself, or as an error of mere negligence, it would 
be of little importance; but it is a case to which Mr. Roscoe has 
expressly applied his own conjectural skill, and solicited the at- 
tention of his i"eader. We may judge, therefore, of his accuracy 
in other cases which he did not think worthy of examination. 

There is another instance, presenting itself in every page, of 
ignorance concurring with laziness, on the part of all Pope's 
editors, and with the effect not so properly of misleading as of 
perplexing the general reader. Until Lord Macclesfield's bill for 
altering the style in the very middle of the eighteenth century, 
eii years, therefore, after the death of Pope, there was a custom, 
arising from the collision between the civil and ecclesiastical year, 
of dating the whole period that lies between December 31st and 
March 25th, (both days exclusively,) as belonging indifferently 
to the past or th? current year. This peculiarity had nothing to 



160 NOTES. 

do with the old and new style, but was, we believe, redressed by 
the same act of Parliament. Now in PojDe's time it was absolutely 
necessary that a man should use this double date, because else 
he was liable to be seriously misunderstood. For instance, it 
was then always said that Charles I. had suffered on the 30th of 
January, 164| ; and why ? Because, had the historian fixed the 
date to what it really was, 1649, in that case all those (a very 
numerous class) who supposed the year 1649 to commence on 
Ladyday, or March 25, would have understood him to mean that 
this event happened in what we now call 1650, for not until 1650 
was there any January which they would have acknowledged as 
belonging to 1049, since they added to the year 1648 all the days 
from January 1 to March 24. On the other hand, if he had 
said simply that Charles suffered in 1648, he would have been 
truly understood by the class we have just mentioned ; but by 
another class, who began the year from the 1st of January, he 
would have been understood to mean what we now mean by the 
year 1648. There would have been a sheer difference, not of one, 
as the reader might think at first sight, but of two entire years in 
the chronology of the two parties; which difference, and all possi- 
bility of doubt, is met and remedied by the fractional date m|- ; 
for that date says in effect it was 1648 to you who do not open the 
new year till Ladyday; it was 1649 to you who open it from Jan- 
uary 1 . Thus much to explain the real sense of the case ; and it 
follows from this explanation, that no part of the year ever can 
ha.-e the fractional or double date except the interval from Jan- 
uary 1 to jNIarch 24 inclusively. And hence arises a practical 
influence, viz., that the very same reason, and no other, which 
formerly enjoined the use of the compound or fractional date, 
viz., the prevention of a capital ambiguity or dilemma, now en- 
joins its omission. For in our day, when the double opening of 
the year is abolished, what sense is there in perplexing a reader 
by using a fraction which offers him a choice without directing 
him how to choose ? In fact, it is the denominator of the frac- 
tion, if one may so style the lower figure, which expresses to a 
modern eye the true year. Yet the editors of Pope, as well as 
many other writers, have confused their readers by this double 
date; and why ? Simply because they were confused themselves. 
Many errors in literature of large extent have arisen from this 



161 



Coiifusion. Thus it was said properly enough in the contempo- 
rary accounts, for instance, in Lord Monmouth's Memoirs, that 
Queen Elizabeth died on the hist day of the year 1602, for she 
died on the •24th of March; and by a careful writer this event 
would have beeu dated as March 24, 1|^|. But many writei-s, 
misled by the phra^je above cited, have asserted that James I. 
was proclaimed on the 1st of January, 1603. Heber, Bishop of 
Calcutta, again, has ruined the entire chronology of the Life cf 
Jeremy Taylor, and unconsciously vitiated the facts, by not un- 
derstanding this fractional date. Mr. lloscoe even too often leaves 
his readers to collect the true year as they can. Thus, e. g. at 
p. 50.1, of his Life, he quotes from Pope's letter to Warburton, in 
great vexation for tlic surreptitious publication of his letters in 
Ireland, under date of February 4, 174°. But why not have 
printed it intelligibly as 1741 .' Incidents there are in most men's 
lives, which are susceptible of a totally ditferent moral value, ac- 
cording as they are dated in one year or another. That might be 
a kind and honorable liberality in 1740, which would be a fraud 
upon creditors in 1741. Exile to a distance of ten miles from 
London in January, 1744, might argue, that a man was a turbu- 
lent citizen, and suspected of treason; whilst the same exile in 
January,' 1745, would simply argue that, as a Papist, he had been 
included amongst his whole body in a general measure of precau- 
tion to meet the public dangers of that year. This explanation 
we have thought it riglit to make, both for its extensive applica- 
tion to all editions of Pope, and on account of the serious blunders 
which have arisen from the case when ill understood; and be- 
cause, in a work upon education, written jointly by Messrs. Lant, 
Carpenter and Shepliard, tliough generally men of ability and 
learning, this whole point is erroneously explained. 

Note 2. Page 105. 
It is .apparently with allusion to this part of the history, which 
he would often have heard from the lips of his own fither, that 
Pope glances at his uncle's memory somewhat disrespectfully in 
his prose letter to Lord Harvey. 

Note 3. Page 105. 
Some accounts, however, say to Flanders, in which case, 
14 



162 NOTES. 

perhaps, Antwerp or Brussels would have tlie honor of his coa 



Note 4. Page 107. 
This, however, was not Twyford, according to an anonymous 
pamphleteer of the times, but a Catholic seminary in Devonshire 
Street, that is, in the Bloomsbury district of London; and the 
same author asserts, that the scene of his disgrace, as indeed 
seems probable beforehand, was not the first, but the last of hia 
arenas as a schoolboy. Which indeed was first, and which last, 
is very unimportant; but witli a view to another point, which is 
not without interest, namely, as to the motive of Pope for so bitter 
a lampoon as we must suppose it to have been, as well as with 
regard to the topics which he used to season it, this anonymous 
letter throws the only light which has been offered ; and strange 
it is, that no biographer of Pope should have hunted upon the 
traces indicated by him. Any solution of Popp's virulence, and 
of the master's bitter retaliation, even as a solution, is so far 
entitled to attention ; apart from which the mere straightforward- 
ness of this man's story, and its minute circumstantiality, weigh 
greatly in its favor. To our thiniiing, he unfolds the whole affair 
in the simple explanation, nowhere else to be found, that the 
master of the school, the mean avenger of a childish insult by a 
bestial punishment, was a Mr. Bromley, one of James II. 's Popish 
apostates; whilst the particular statements which he makes with 
respect to himself and the young Duke of Norfolk of 1700, as two 
schoolfellows of Pope at that time and place, together with hia 
voluntary promise to come forward in person, and verify his ac- 
count if it should happen to be challenged, — are all, we repeat, 
so many presumptions in favor of his veracity. ' Mr. Alexander 
Pope,' says he, ' before he had been four months at this school, 
or was able to construe TuUy's Offices, employed his muse in 
satirizing his master. It was a libel of at least one hundred 
verses, which (a fellow-student having given information of it) was 
found in his pocket; and the young satirist was soundly whipped, 
and kept a prisoner to his room for seven days; whereupon hia 
father fetched him awaj^ and I have been told he never went to 
school more.' This Bromley, it has been ascertained, was the 
Bon of a country gentleman in Worcestershire, and must have had 



NOTES. 163 

eonsiderable prospects at one time, since it appears that he had 
been a gentlcman-comnioner at Christ's Church, Oxford There 
is an error in the punctuation of the letter we have just quoted, 
which affects the sense in a way very important to the question 
before us. Bromley is described as 'one of King James's con- 
verts in Oxford, some years after that prince's abdication ; ' but, 
if tills were really so, he must have been a conscientious convert. 
The latter clause should be connected with what follows : ' Some 
years after that prince's abdication he kept a little seminary ; ' 
that is, when his mercenary views in quitting his religion were 
effectually defeated, when the Boyne had sealed his despair, he 
humbled himself into a petty schoolmaster. These facts are inter- 
esting, because they suggest at once the motive for the merciless 
punishment inflicted upon Pope. His own father was a Paj^ist 
like Bromley, but a sincere and honest Papist, who had borne 
double taxes, legal stigmas, and public hatred for conscience' 
sake. His contempt was habitually pointed at those who tam- 
pered with religion for interested purposes. His son inherited 
these upright feelings. And we may easily guess what would be 
the bitter sting of any satire he would write on Bromley. Such 
a topic was too true to be forgiven, and too keenly barbed by 
Bromley's conscience. By the way, this writer, like ourselves, 
reads in this juvenile adventure a prefiguration of Pope's satirical 
destiny. 

Note 5. Page 112. 

That is, Sheffield, and, legally speaking, of BuckinghamsAtre. 
For he would not take the title of Buckingham, under a fear that 
there was lurking somewhere or other a claim to that title 
amongst the connections of the Villiers family. He was a pom- 
pous grandee, who lived in uneasy splendor, and, as a writer, 
most extravagantly overrated; accordingly, he is now forgotten. 
Such was his vanity and his ridiculous mania for allying himself 
with royalty, that he first of all had the presumption to court the 
Princess (afterwards Queen) Anne. Being rejected, he then 
offered himself to tlie illegitimate daughter of James XL, by the 
daughter of Sir Charles Sedley. She was as ostentatious as him. 
self, and accepted him. 



164 



Note 6. Page 117. 
Meantime, the felicities of this translation are at times perfectly 
astonishing ; and it would be scarcely possible to express more 
nervously or amply the words, 

'jurisque secundi 

Ambitus impatiens, er summo dulcius unum 
Stare loco,' 

than this child of fourteen has done in the following couplet, 
which, most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the 
power of fusing them into connection : 

' And impotent desire to reign alone, 
That scorris the dull reversion of a throne.' 

But the passage for which beyond all others we must make room, 
is a series of eight lines, corresponding to six in the original ; and 
this for two reasons : First, Because Dr. Joseph Warton has de- 
liberately asserted, that in our whole literature, ' we have scarcely 
eight more beautiful lines than these ; ' and though few readers 
will subscribe to so sweeping a judgment, yet certainly these 
must be wonderful lines for a boy, which could challenge such 
commendation from an experienced polyhistor of infinite reading. 
Secondly, Because the lines contain a night-scene. Now it must 
be well known to many readers, that the famous night-scene in 
the Iliad, so fomiliar to every schoolboy, has been made the sub- 
• ject, for the last thirty years, of severe, and in many respects. 
of just criticisms. This description will therefore have a double 
interest by comparison; whilst, whatever may be thought of 
either taken separately for itself, considered as a translation, 
this which we now quote is as true to Statins as the other ia 
undoubtedly faithless to Homer : 

' Jamque per emeriti surgens confinia Phabi 
Titanis, late mundo subvecta silenti 
Rorifera gelidum te/iuaverat aera biga. 
Jam pecudes volucresque taceiit : jam somnus avaris 
Jnserpit curis, pronusque per aera nutat. 
Grata laboratce referens obliuia vitcB.' 

Theb. i. 336-341- 



KOXES. 165 

• 'T was now the time when Phoebus yields to night, 
And rising Cynthia sheds her silver light ; 
Wide o'er the world in solemn pomp she drew 
Her airy chariot hung with pearly dew. 
All birds and beasts lie hush'd. Sleep steals away 
The wild desires of men and toils of day ; 
And brings, descending through the silent air, 
A sweet forgetfulncss of human care ' 

Note 7. Page 118. 
One writer of that age says, in Cheapside; but probably this 
difference arose from contemplating Lombard Street as a pro- 
longation of Cheapside. 

Note 8. Page 123. 
Dr. Johnson said, that all he could discover about Mr. Crom- 
well, was the foct of his going a hunting in a tie-wig ; but Gay 
hjis added another fact to Dr. Johnson's by calling him, 'lionest 
halless Cromwell with red breeches ' This epithet has puzzled 
the commentators; but its import is obvious enough. Cromwell, 
as we learn from more than one person, was anxious to be con- 
sidered a iine gentleman, and devoted to women. Now it was long 
the custom in that age for such persons, when walking with 
ladies, to carry their hats in their hand. Louis XV. used to ride 
by the side of Madame de Pompadour hat in hand. 

Note 9. Page 127. 
It is strange enough to find, not only that Pope had so fre- 
quently kept rough copies of his own letters, and that he thought 
80 well of them as to repeat the same letter to different persons, 
as in the case of the two lovers killed by lightning, or even to 
two sisters, Martha and Therese Blount, (who were sure to com- 
municate their letters,) and that even Swift hai retained copies 
of his. 

Note 10. Page 138. 

The word x.ndirtake had not yet lost the meaning of Shak 

Bpeare's age, in which it was understood to describe those cases 

where, the labor being of a miscellaneous kind, some person in 



166 NOIES. 

chief offered to overlook and conduct the whole, whether with or 
without personal labor. The modern undertaker , limited to the 
care of funerals, was then but one of numerous cases to which 
the term was applied. 

Note 11. Page 151. 
We may illustrate this feature in the behavior of Pope to Sav- 
age. When all else forsook him, when all beside pleaded the 
insults of Savage for withdrawing their subscriptions, Pope sent 
his in advance. And when Savage had insulted him also, arro- 
gantly commanding him never ' to presume to interfere or meddle 
in his affairs,' dignity and self-respect made Pope obedient to 
these orders, except when there was an occasion of serving 
Savage. On his second visit to Bristol, (when he returned from 
Glamorganshire,) Savage had been thrown into the jail of the 
city. One person only interested himself for this hopeless profli- 
gate, arnd was causing an inquiry to be made about his debts at 
the time Savage died. So much Dr. Johnson admits; but he 
forgets, to mention the name of this long-suffering friend. It 
was Pope. Meantime, let us not be supposed to believe the 
lying legend of Savage; he was doubtless no son of Lady 
Macclesfield's, but an impostor, who would not be sent to the 
tread-mill. 



CHARLES LAMB. 

It sounds paradoxical, but is not so in a 1 ad sense, 
to say that in every literature of large compass some 
authors will be found to rest much of the interest 
which surrounds thcin on their essential won-popularity. 
They arc good for the very reason that they are not in 
conformity to the current taste. They interest be- 
cause to the world they are not interesting. They 
atlract by means of their repulsion. Not as though it 
could separately furnish a reason for loving a book, 
that the majority of men had found it repulsive. Prima 
facie, it must suggest some presumption against a 
book, that it has failed to gain public attention. To 
have roused hostility indeed, to have kindled a feud 
against its own principles or its temper, may happen 
to be a good sign. That argues power. Hatred may 
be promising. The deepest revolutions of mind 
sometimes begin in hatred. But simply to have left 
a reader unimpressed, is in itself a neutral result, from 
which the inference is doubtful. Yet even that, even 
simple failure to impress, may happen at times to be a 
result from positive powers in a writer, from special 
originalities, such as rarely reflect themselves in the 
mirror of the ordinary understanding. It seems little 
to be perceived, how much the great scriptural ' idea 

[167] 



168 CHARLES LAMB. 

of the worldly and the unworldly is found to emerge in 
literature as well as in life. In reality the very same 
combinations of moral qualities, infinitely A-aried, which 
compose the harsh physiognomy of what we call world- 
liness in the living groups of life, must unavoidably 
present themselves in books. A library divides into 
sections of worldly and unworldly, even as a crowd of 
men divides into that same majority and minority. The 
world has an instinct for recognizing its OAvn ; and re- 
coils from certain qualities when exemplified in books, 
with the same disgust or defective sympathy as would 
have governed it in real life. From qualities for instance 
of childlike simplicity, of shy profundity, or of inspired 
self-communion, the world does and must turn away 
its face towards grosser, bolder, more determined, or 
more intelligible expressions of character and intellect ; 
and not otherwise in literature, nor at all less in litera- 
ture, than it does in the realities of life. 

Charles Lamb, if any ever was, is amongst the class 
here contemplated ; he, if ever any has, ranks amongst 
writers whose works are destined to be for ever unpopu- 
lar, and yet for ever interesting ; interesting, moreover, 
by means of those very qualities which guarantee their 
non-popularity. The same qualities which will be 
found forbidding to the worldly and the thoughtless, 
which will be found insipid to many even amongst 
robust and powerful minds, are exactly those which will 
continue to command a select audience in every gene- 
ration. The prose essays, under the signature of Elia, 
form the most delightful section amongst Lamb'.3 woiks. 
They traverse a peculiar field of observation, seques- 
tered from general interest ; and they are composed iu 
a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the ear of 



CHAKLES LAMB. 169 

the noisy crowd, clamoring for strong sensations. But 
this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness chequered 
by gleams of the fanciful, and the humor that is touched 
Avith cross-lights of pathos, together with the picturesque 
quaintness of the objects casually described, whether 
men, or things, or usages, and, in the rear of all this, 
the constant recurrence to ancient recollections and to 
decaying forms of household life, as things retiring be- 
fore the tumult of new and revolutionary generations ; 
these traits in combination communicata to the papers 
a grace and strength of originality which nothing in 
any literature approaches, whether for degree or kind 
of excellence, except the most felicitous papers of 
Addison, such as those on Sir Roger de Coverley, and 
some others in the same vein of composition. They 
resemble Addison's papers also in the diction, which is 
natural and idiomatic, even to carelessness. They are 
equally faithful to the truth of nature ; and in this 
only they differ remarkably — that the sketches of Elia 
reflect the stamp and impress of the writer's own char- 
acter, whereas in all those of Addison the personal 
peculiarities of the delineator (though known to the 
reader from the beginning through the account of the 
club) are nearly quiescent. Now and then they are 
»-ecalled into a momentary notice, but they do not act, 
or at all modify his pictures of Sir Roger or Will 
Wimble. They are slightly and amiably eccentric ; but 
the Spectator himself, in describing them, takes the 
station of an ordinary observer. 

Everywhere, indeed, in the writings of Lamb, and 

not merely in his Elia, the character of the writer 

cooperates in an undercurrent to the effect of the thing 

written To understand in the fullest se7ise either the 

15 



1 70 CHARLES LAMB. 

c>ayely or the tenderness of a particular parrsage, you 
must have some insight into the peculiar bias of the 
writer's mind, whether native and original, or impressed 
gradually by the accidents of situation ; whether simply 
developed out of predispositions by the action of life, or 
violently scorched into the constitution by some fierce 
fever of calamity. There is in modern literature a 
whole class of writers, though not a large one, standing 
within the same category ; some marked originality of 
character in the writer becomes a coeificient with what 
he says to a common result ; you must sympathize with 
this personality in the author before you can appre- 
ciate the most significant parts of his views. In most 
books the writer figures as a mere abstraction, without 
sex or age or local station, whom the reader banishes 
from his thoughts. What is written seems to proceed 
from a blank intellect, not from a man clothed with 
fleshly peculiarities and diff'erences. These peculiari- 
ties and diff'erences neither do, nor (generally speaking) 
^ould intermingle with the texture of the thoughts so 
as to modify their force or their direction. In such 
books, and they form the vast majority, there is noth- 
ing to be found or to be looked for beyond the direct 
objective. (Sit venia verho !) But, in a small section 
of books, the objective in the thought becomes conflu- 
ent with the subjective in the thinker — the two forces 
unite for a joint product ; and fully to enjoy the pro- 
duct, or fully to apprehend either element, both must 
be known. It is singular, and worth inquiring into, for 
tli3 reason that the Greek and Roman literature had no 
such books. Timon of Athens, or Diogenes, one may 
conceive qualified for this mode of authorship, had 
joMinalism existed to rouse them in those days ; theii 



CHARLES LAMB. 171 

* articles ' would no doubt have been fearfully caustic 
liut, as they failed to produce anything, and Lucian in 
an after age is scarcely characteristic enough for the 
purpose, perhajjs we may pronounce Rabelais and 
Montaigne the earliest of writers in the class described 
In the century following theirs, came Sir Thomas 
Browne, and immediately after him La Fontaine. Tien 
come Swift, Sterne, wdth others less distinguished ; in 
Germany, Hippel, the friend of Kant, Harmann, rhe 
obscure ; and the greatest of the whole body — John 
Paul Fr. llichter. In him, from the strength and de- 
tcrminateness of his nature as well as fn oi the great 
extent of his writing, the philosophy of this interaction 
between the author as a human agency and his theme 
as an intellectual reagency, might best be studied. 
From him might be derived the largest number of cases 
illustrating boldly his absorption of the universal into 
the concrete — of the pure intellect into the human 
nat'ire of the author. But nowhere could illustrations 
be found more interesting — shy, delicate, evanescent — 
shy as lightning, delicate and evanescent as the colored 
pcncillings on a frosty night from the northern lights, 
than in the better parts of Lamb. 

To appreciate Lamb, therefore, it is requisite that 
his character and temperament should be understood 
in their coyest and most wayward features. A capital 
defect it would be if these could not be gathered silently 
from Lamb's works themselves. It would be. a fatal 
mode of dependency upon an alien and separable acci- 
dent if they needed an external commentary. Bat 
they do not. The syllables lurk up and down the 
writings of Lamb which decipher his eccentric nature. 
His character lies there dispeised in anagram ; and tc 



172 CHAKLES LAMB. 

any attentive reader the regathering and restoration of 
tlae total word from its scattered parts is inevitable 
without an effort. Still it is always a satisfaction in 
knowing a result, to know also its V)hy and lioio ; and 
in so far as every character is likely to be modified by 
the particular experience, sad or joyous, through which 
the life has travelled, it is a good contribution towards 
the knowledge of that resulting character as a whole 
to have a sketch of that particular experience. What 
trials did it impose ? What energies did it task ? What 
temptations did it unfold ? These calls upon the moral 
powers, which, in music so stormy, many a life is 
doomed to hear, how were they faced ? The character 
in a capital degree moulds oftentimes the life, but the 
life always in a subordinate degree moulds the charac- 
ter. And the character being in this case of Lamb so 
much of a key to the writings, it becomes important 
that the life should be traced, however briefly, as a 
key to the character. 

That is one reason for detaining the reader with 
some slight record of Lamb's career. Such a record 
hy preference and of right belongs to a case where the 
intellectual display, which is the sole ground of any 
public interest at all in the man, has been intensely 
modified by the humanities and moral personalities 
distinguishing the subject. We read a Physiology, and 
need no information as to the life and conversation of 
its author ; a meditative poem becomes far better un- 
derstood by the light of such information ; but a work 
of genial and at the same time eccentric sentiment, 
wandering upon untrodden paths, is barely intelligible 
■without it. There is a good reason for arresting judg- 
ment on the writer, that the court may receive evidenca 



CHAKLES XAMB. 173 

on the life of the man. But there is another reason, 
and, in any other place, a better ; which reason lies in 
the extraordinary value of the life considered separately 
for itself. Logically, it is not allowable to say that 
here ; and considering the principal purpose of this 
paper, any possible independent value of the life must 
rank' as a better reason for reporting it. Since, in a 
case where the original object is professedly to esti- 
mate the writings of a man, whatever promises to 
further that object must, merely by that tendency, 
have, in relation to that place, a momentary advantao-e 
which it would lose if valued upon a more abstract 

scale. Liberated from this casual office of throwino- 

o 

light upon a book — raised to its grander station of a 
solemn deposition to the moral capacities of man in 
conflict with calamity — viewed as a return made into 
the chanceries of heaven — upon an issue directed 
from that court to try the amount of power lodged in 
a poor desolate pair of human creatures for facing the 
very anarchy of storms — this obscure life of the two 
Lambs, brother and sister, (for the two lives were one 
life,) rises into a grandeur that is not paralleled onco 
in a generation. 

Rich, indeed, in moral instruction was the life of 
Cliarles Lamb ; and perhaps in one chief result it offers 
to the thoughtful observer a lesson of consolation that 
is awful, and of hope that ought to be immortal, viz., 
in the record which it furnishes, that by meekness of 
submission, and by earnest conflict with evil, in the 
spirit of cheerfulness it is possible ultimately to disarm 
or to blunt the very heaviest of curses — even the 
curse of lunacy. Had it been whispered, in hours of 
infancy, to Lamb, by the angel who stood by his 



174 CHAKLES LAMB. 

cradle — ' Thou, and the sister that walks by ten years 
before thee, shall be through life, each to each, the 
solitary fountain of comfort ; and except it be from 
this fountain of mutual love, except it be as brothei 
and sister, ye shall not taste the cup of peace on 
earth ! ' — here, if there was sorrow in reversion, there 
was also consolation. 

But what funeral swamps would have instantly si~ 
"gulfed this consolation, had some meddling fiend jrc- 
longed the revelation, and, holding up the curtain from 
the sad feature a little longer, had said scornfully — 
' Peace on earth ! Peace for you two, Charles and 
Mary Lamb ! What peace is possible under the curse 
which even now is gathering against your heads ? Is 
there peace on earth for the lunatic — peace for the 
parenticide — peace for the girl that, without warning, 
and without time granted for a penitential cry to 
Heaven, sends her mother to the last audit? And 
then, without treachery, speaking bare truth, this 
prophet of woe might have added — ' Thou, also, 
thyself, Charles Lamb, thou in thy proper person, 
ohalt enter the skirts of this dreadful hail-storm ; even 
thou shalt taste the secrets of lunacy, and enter as a 
captive its house of bondage ; whilst over thy sister 
the accursed scorpion shall hang suspended through 
life, like death hanging over the beds of hospitals, 
striking at times, but more often threatening to strike : 
or withdrawing its instant menaces only to lay bare 
her mind more bitterly to the persecutions of a haunted 
memory ! ' Considering the nature of the calamity, in 
the first place ; considering, in the second place, its 
lifelong duration ; and, in the last place, considering 
the quality of the resistance by which it was met, and 



CHAKLES XAMB. 175 

under wLat circumstances of humble resources in 
monej' or friends — we have come to the deliberate 
judgment, that the whole range of history scarcely 
presents a more affecting spectacle of perpetual sorrow, 
humiliation, or conflict, and that was supported to the 
end, (that is, through forty years,) with more resigna- 
tion, or with more absolute victory. 

Chirlcs Lamb was born in February of the yeai 
1775. His immediate descent Avas humble; for his 
father, though on one particular occasion civilly de- 
scribed as a ' scrivener,' was in reality a domestic 
servant to Mr. Salt — a bencher (and therefore a bar- 
rister of some standing) in the Inner Temple. John 
Lamb the father belonged by birth to Lincoln ; from 
which city, being transferred to London whilst yet a 
boy, he entered the service of Mr. Salt without delay; 
and apparently from this period throughout his life 
continued in this good man's household to support the 
honorable relation of a Roman client to his patronus, 
much more than that of a mercenary servant to a tran- 
sient and capricious master. The terms on which he 
seems to live with the family of the Lambs, argue a 
kindness and a liberality of nature on both sides. John 
Lamb recommended himself as an attendant by the 
versatility of his accomplishments ; and Mr. Salt, being 
a widower without children, which means in effect an 
old bachelor, naturally valued that encyclopaedic range 
of dexterity which made his house independent of ex- 
ternal aid for every mode of service. To kill one's 
own mutton is but an operose way of arriving at a 
dinner, and often a more costly way ; whereas to 
combine one's own carpenter, locksmith, hair-dresser, 
groom, ikc, all in one man's person, — to have a 



176 CHARLES LAMB. 

Robinson Crusoe, up to all emergencies of life, always 
in waiting, — is a luxury of the highest class for one 
who values his ease. 

A consultation is held more freely with a man familial 
to one's eye, and more profitably with a man aware of 
one's peculiar habits. And another advantage from 
siich an arrangement is, that one gets any little altera- 
tion or repair executed on the spot. To hear is to 
obey, and by an inversion of Pope's rule — 
• One always is, and never to be, blest.' 

People of one sole accomplishment, like the homo 
unius libri, are usually Avithin that narrow circle dis- 
agreeably perfect, and therefore apt to be arrogant. 
People who can do all things, usually do every one of 
them ill ; and living in a constant efibrt to deny this 
too palpable fact they become irritably vain. But Mr. 
Lamb the elder seems to have been bent on perfection. 
He did all things ; he did them all well ; and yet was 
neither gloomily arrogant nor testily vain. And being 
conscious apparently that all mechanic excellences 
tend to illiberal results, unless counteracted by per- 
petual sacrifices to the muses, he went so far as to 
cultivate poetry ; he even printed his poems, and were 
we possessed of a copy, (which we are 7iot, nor proba- 
bly is the Vatican,) it would give us pleasure at this 
point to digress for a moment, and to cut them up, 
purely on considerations of respect to the author's 
memory. It is hardly to be supposed that they did 
not really merit castigation ; and we should best show 
the sincerity of our respect for Mr. Lamb, senior, in 
all those cases where we could conscientiously profesa 
respect, by an unlimited application of the kno it iu 
the cases where we could 7iot. 



CHARLES LAMB. 1<7 

The wliole family of tlie Lambs seems to haA^e won 
from Mr. Salt the consideration which is granted to 
humble friends ; and from acquaintances nearer to their 
own standing, to have won a tenderness of esteem such 
as is granted to decayed gentry. Yet naturally, the 
social rank of the parents, as people still living, must- 
have operated disadvantageously for the children. It 
is hard, even for the practised philosopher to distin- 
guish aristocratic graces of manner, and capacities of 
delicate feeling, in people whose very hearth and dress 
bear witness to the servile humility of their station. 
Yet sixch distinctions as t<-ild gifts of nature, timidly 
and half-unconsciously asserted themselves in the un- 
pretending Lambs. Already in their favor there existed 
a silent privilege analogous to the famous one of Lord 
Kinsale. He, by special grant from the crown, is 
allowed, when standing before the king, to forget that 
he is not himself a king ; the bearer of that peerage, 
through all generations, has the privilege of wearing 
his hat in the royal presence. By a general though 
tacit concession of the same nature, the rising genera- 
tion of the Lambs, John and Charles, the two sons, and 
Mary Lamb, the only daughter, were permitted to foi- 
gct that their grandmother had been a housekeeper for 
sixty years, and that their father had worn a livery. 
Charles Lamb, individually was so entirely humble, and 
so careless of social distinctions, that he has taken 
plea'jurc in recurring to these very facts in the family 
records amongst the most genial of his Elia recollec- 
tions. He only continued to remember, without shame, 
and with a peculiar tenderness, these badges of plebeian 
rank, when everybody else, amongst the few survivors 
that could have known of their existence, had long dis« 
missed them from their thoughts. 



178 CHAELES LAMB. 

Probably througb Mr. Salt's interest, Cbarles Lamb, 
in the autumn of 1782, wben be wanted sometldng 
more tban four months of completing bis eighth year, 
received a presentation to the magnificent school of 
Christ's Hospital. The late Dr. Arnold, when con- 
trasting the school of his own boyish experience, 
Winchester, with Rugby, the school confided to his 
management, found nothing so much to regret in the 
circumstances of the latter as its forlorn condition with 
respect to historical traditions. Wherever these were 
wanting, and supposing the school of sufficient magni- 
tude, it occurred to Dr. Arnold that something of a 
compensatory effect for impressing the imagination 
might be obtained by connecting the school with the 
nation through the link of annual prizes issuing from 
the exchequer. An official basis of national patron- 
age might prove a substitute for an antiquarian or 
ancestral basis. Happily for the great educational 
foundations of London, none of them is in the naked 
condition of Rugby. Westminster, St. Paul's, Mer- 
chant Tailors,' the Charter-house, &c., are all crowned 
with historical recollections ; and Christ's Hospital, 
besides the original honors of its foundation, so fitted 
to a consecrated place in a youthful imagination — an 
asylum for boy-students, provided by a boy-king — 
innocent, religious, prematurely wise, and prematurely 
called away from earth — has also a mode of perpetual 
connection with the state. It enjoys, therefore, loth 
of Dr. Arnold's advantages. Indeed, all the great 
foundation schools of London, bearing in their very 
codes of organization the impress of a double function 
— viz., the conservation of sound learning and of pure 
religion — wear something of a monastic or cloisteral 



CHAKLES LAMB. 1 79 

character In their aspect and usages, which is pecu- 
liarly impressive, and even pathetic, amidst the uproars 
of a capital the most colossal and tumultuous upon 
earth. 

Here Lamb remained until his fifteenth year, which 
year threw him on the world, and brought him along- 
side the golden dawn of the French Revolution. Here 
he learned a little elementary Greek, and of Latin 
more than a little ; for the Latin notes to Mr. Cary (of 
Dante celebrity) though brief, are sufficient to reveal a 
true sense of what is graceful and idiomatic in Latinity. 
We say this, who have studied that subject more than 
most men. It is not that Lamb would have found it an 
easy task to compose a long paper in Latin — nobody 
ca7i find it easy to do what he has no motive for habitu- 
ally practising ; but a single sentence of Latin wearing 
the secret countersign of the ' sweet Roman hand,' 
ascertains sufficiently that, in reading Latin classics, a 
man feels and comprehends their peculiar force or 
beauty. That is enough. It is requisite to a man's 
exjiansion of mind that he should make acquaintance 
with a literature so radically diff"ering from all modern 
literature as is the Latin. It is not requisite that he 
should practise Latin composition. Here, therefore. 
Lamb obtained in sufficient perfection one priceless 
accomplishment, which even singly throws a graceful 
air of liberality over all the rest of a man's attainments : 
having rarely any pecuniary value, it challenges the 
more attention to its intellectual value. Here also 
Lamb commenced the friendships of his life ; and, of 
all which he formed he lost none. Here it was, as the 
consummation and crown of his advantages from the 
time-honored hospital, that he came to know ' Poor 

S. 1. C. " rov diXv^aoiwTuror. 



180 CHARLES liAXB. 

Until 1796, it is probable tbat lie lost siglit of Coler- 
idge, who was then occupied with Cambridge?, having 
been transferred thitlier as a ' Grecian ' from the house 
of Christ Church. The year 1795, was a year of 
change and fearful calamity for Charles Lamb. On 
that year revolved the wheels of his after-life. During 
the three years succeeding to his school days, he had 
held a clerkship in the South Sea House. In 1795, 
he was transferred to the India House. As a junior 
clerk, he could not receive more than a slender salary ; 
but even this was important to the support of his pa- 
rents and sister. They lived together in lodgings near 
Holborn ; and in the spring of 1796, Miss Lamb, (hav- 
ing previously shown signs of lunacy at intervals,) in 
a sudden paroxysm of her disease, seized a knife from 
the dinner table, and stabbed her mother, who died 
upon the spot. A coroner's inquest easily ascertained 
the nature of a case which was transparent in all its 
circumstances, and never for a moment indecisive aa 
regarded the medical symptoms. The poor young 
lady was transferred to the establishment for lunatics 
at Hoxton. She soon recovered, we believe ; but her 
relapses were as sudden as her recoveries, and she 
continued through life to revisit, for periods of uncer- 
tain seclusion, this house of woe. This calamity of hla 
fireside, followed soon after by the death of his father, 
who had for some time been in a state of imbecility, 
determined the future destiiiy of Lamb. Apprehend- 
ing, witli the perfect grief of perfect love, that his sis- 
ter's fate was sealed for life — viewing her as his own 
greatest benefactress, which she really had been through 
her advantage by ten years of age — yielding with im- 
passioned readiness to the depth of his fraternal afFeC' 



CHAELES LAMB. 181 

tion, wliat at any rate he Avould liave yielded to the 
sanctities of duty as interpreted by his own conscience 
— he resolved for ever to resign all thoughts of marriage 
with a young lady whom he loved, for ever to abandon 
all ambitious prospects that might have tempted him 
into uncertainties, humbly to content himself with the 
certainties of his Indian clerkship, to dedicate himself 
for the future to the care of his desolate and prostrate 
sister, and to leave the rest to God. These sacrifices 
he made in no hurry or tumult, but deliberately, and 
in religious tranquillity. These sacrifices were ac- 
cepted in heaven — and even on this earth they had 
their reward. She, for whom he gave up all, in turn 
gave up all for him. She devoted herself to his com- 
fort. Many times she returned to the lunatic estab- 
lishment, but many times she was restored to illumi- 
nate the household for /m?z ; and of the happiness 
which for forty years and more he had, no hour seemed 
true that was not derived from her. Henceforward, 
therefore, until he was emancipated by the noble 
generosity of the East India Directors, Lamb's time 
for nine-and-twenty years, was given to the India 
House. 

' O fortunati nimmrn, sua si bona norint,' is appli- 
cable to more people than ' agricola.' Clerks of the 
India House are as blind to their own advantages as 
the blindest of ploughmen. Lamb was summoned, it is 
true, through the larger and more genial section of his 
life, to the drudgery of a copying clerk — making con- 
fidential entries into mighty folios, on the subject of 
calicoes and muslins. By this means, whether he 
would or not, he became gradually the author of a 
great ' serial ' work, in a frightful number of volumes, 



182 CHAKLES LAMB. 

on as dry a department of literature as the children of 
the great desert could have suggested. Nobody, he 
must have felt, was ever likely to study this great work 
of his, not even Dr. Dryasdust. He had written in 
vain, which is not pleasant to know. There would be 
no second edition called for by a discerning public in 
Leadenhall Street ; not a chance of that. And con- 
sequently the opera omnia of Lamb, drawn up in a 
hideous battalion, at the cost of labor so enormous, 
would be known only to certain families of spiders in 
one generation, and of rats in the next. Such a labor 
of Sisyphus, — the rolling up a ponderous stone to the 
summit of a hill only that it might roll back again 
by the gravitation of its own dulness, — seems a bad 
employment for a man of genius in his meridian 
energies. And yet, perhaps not. Perhaps the col- 
lective wisdom of Europe could not have devised for 
Lamb a more favorable condition of toil than this very 
India House clerkship. His works (his Leadenhall 
Street works) were certainly not read ; popular they 
could not be, for they were not read by anybody ; but 
then, to balance tliat, they were not reviewed. His 
folios were of that order, which (in Cowper's words,) 
' not even critics criticize.' Is that nothing? Is it no 
happiness to escape the hands of scoundrel reviewers ? 
Many of us escape being read ; the worshipful reviewer 
does not find time to read a line of us ; but we do not 
for that reason escape being criticized, ' shown up,' 
and martyred. The list of errata again, committed by 
Lamb, was probably of a magnitude to alarm any pos- 
sible compositor ; and yet these errata will never be 
knoAvn to mankind. They are dead and buried. They 
have been cut off prematurely ; and for any effect upon 



CHAKXES LAMB, 183 

thefr generation, might as well never have existed. 
Then the returns, in a pecuniary sense, from these 
folios — how important were they ! It is not common, 
certainly, to write folios ; but neither is it common to 
draw a steady income of from 300Z. to 400Z. per an- 
num from volumes of any size. This will be admitted ; 
but would it not have been better to draw the income 
without the toil ? Doubtless it would always be more 
agreeable to have the rose without the thorn. But in 
the case before us, taken with all its circumstances, 
we deny that the toil is truly typified as a thorn ; so 
far from being a thorn in Lamb's daily life, on the con- 
trary, it was a second rose ingrafted upon the original 
rose of the income, that he had to earn it by a moderate 
but continued exertion. Holidays, in a national estab- 
lishment so great as the India House, and in our too 
fervid period, naturally could not be frequent ; yet all 
great English corporations are gracious masters, and 
indulgences of this nature could be obtained on a 
special application. Not to count upon these accidents 
of favor, we find that the regular toil of those in 
Lamb's situation, began at ten in the morning and 
ended as the clock struck four in the afternoon. Six 
hours composed the daily contribution of labor, that is 
precisely one fourth part of the total day. Only that, 
as Sunday was exempted, the rigorous exjiression of 
the quota was one fourth of six-sevenths, which 
makes six twenty-eighths and not six twenty- fourths 
of the total time. Less toil than this would hardly 
have availed to deepen the sense of value in that 
large part of the time still remaining disposable. Had 
there been any resumption whatever of labor in the 
evening, though but for half an hour, that one eii 



184 CHABLES IAMB. 

croachment upon tte broad continuous area of tlie 
eighteen free hours would have killed the tranquillity 
of the whole day, by solving it (so to speak) with 
intermitting anxieties — anxieties that, like tides, 
would still be rising and falling. Whereas now, at 
the early hour of four, when daylight is yet lingering 
in the air, even at the dead of winter, in the latitude 
of London, and when the enjoying section of the day 
is barely commencing, everything is left which a man 
would care to retain. A mere dilettante or amateur 
student, having no mercenary interest concerned, 
would, upon a refinement of luxury — would, upon 
choice, give up so so much time to study, were it only 
to sharpen the value of what remained for pleasure. 
And thus the only difference between the scheme of 
the India House distributing his time for Lamb, and 
the scheme of a wise voluptuary distributing his time 
for himself, lay, not in the amount of time deducted 
from enjoyment, but in the particular mode of appro- 
priating that deduction. An intellectual appropriation 
of the time, though casually fatiguing, must have 
pleasures of its own ; pleasures denied to a task so 
mechanic and so monotonous as that of reiterating 
endless records of sales or consignments not essentially 
varying from each other. True ; it is pleasantcr to 
pursue an intellectual study than to make entries in a 
ledger. But even an intellectual toil is toil ; few peo- 
ple can support it for more than six hours in a day. 
And the only question, therefore, after all, is, at what 
period of the day a man would prefer taking this 
pleasure of study. Now, upon that point, as regards 
the case of Lamb, there is no opening for doubt. He. 
LiO^agst his Popular Fallacies, admirably illustrates 



CHARLES LAMB. 185 

the necessity of evening and artificial lights to the 
prosperity of studies. After exposing, with the per- 
fection of fun, the savage unsociality of those eklcr 
ancestors who lived (if life it was) before lamp-light 
was invented, showing that 'jokes came in with 
caudles,' since ' what repartees could have passed ' when 
people were ' grumbling at one another in the dark,' 
and ' when you must have felt about for a smile, and 
handled a neighbor's cheek to be sure that he under- 
stood it? ' — he goes on to say, ' This accounts for the 
seriousness of the elder poetry,' viz., because they 
had no candle-light. Even eating he objects to as a 
very imperfect thing in the dark ; you are not con- 
vinced that a dish tastes as it should do by the promise 
of its name, if you dine in the twilight without candles. 
Seeing is believing. ' The senses absolutely give and 
take reciprocally.' The sight guarantees the taste. 
For instance, ' Can you tell pork from veal in the dark, 
or distinguish Sherries from pure Malaga ? ' To all 
enjoyments whatsoever candles are indispensable as 
an adjunct; but, as to reading, ' there is,' says Lamb, 
' absolutely no such thing but by a candle. We have 
tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, 
but it was labor thrown away. It is a mockery, all that 
is reported of the influential Phrobus. No true poem 
ever owed its birth to the sun's light. The mild 
internal light, that reveals the fine shapings of poetry, 
like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sun- 
shine. Milton's morning hymn in Paradise, we would 
hold a good wager, was penned at midnight ; and Tay- 
lor's rich description of a sunrise smells decidedly of 
the taper.' This view of evening and candle-light aa 
involved in literature may seem no more ihan a pleaa- 
16 



186 CHAKLES LAMB. 

ant extravaganza ; and no doubt it is in the nature of 
such gayeties to travel a little into exaggeration, but 
substantially it is certain that Lamb's feelings pointed 
habitually in the direction here indicated. His literary 
studies, whether taking the color of tasks or diversions, 
courted the aid of evening, which, by means of phys- 
ical weariness, produces a more luxurious state of re- 
pose than belongs to the labor hours of day, and courted 
the aid of lamp-light, which, as Lord Bacon remarked, 
gives a gorgeousness to human pomps and pleasures, 
such as would be vainly sought from the homeliness 
of daylight. The hours, therefore, which were with- 
drawn from his own control by the India House, 
happened to be exactly that part of the day which 
Lamb least valued, and could least have turned to 
account. 

The account given of Lamb's friends, of those whom 
he endeavored to love because he admired them, or to 
esteem intellectually because he loved them personally, 
is too much colored for general acquiescence by Ser- 
geant Talfourd's own early prepossessions. It is natural 
that an intellectual man like the Sergeant, personally 
made known in youth to people, whom from child- 
hood he had regarded as powers in the ideal world, 
and in some instances as representing the eternities of 
human speculation, since their names had perhaps 
dawned upon his mind in concurrence with the very 
earliest suggestion of topics which they had treated, 
should overrate theu- intrinsic grandeur. Hazlitt ac- 
cordingly is styled ' The great thinker.' But had he 
been such potentially, there was an absolute bar to his 
achievement of that station in act and consummation. 
No man can be a great thinker in our days upon large 



CHARLES LAMB. 187 

and elaborate questions without being also a great stu- 
dent. To think profoundly, it is indispensable that a 
man should have read down to his own starting point, 
and have read as a collating student to the particular 
stage at which he himself takes up the subject. At 
this moment, for instance, how could geology be treated 
otherwise than childishly by one who should rely upon 
the encyclopaedias of 1800 ? or comparative physiology 
by the most ingenious of men unacquainted with Mar- 
shall Hall, and with the apocalyptic glimpses of secrets 
unfolding under the hands of Professor Owen? In 
such a condition of undisciplined thinking, the ablest 
man thinks to no purpose. He lingers upon parts of 
the inquiry that have lost the importance which once 
they had, under imperfect charts of the subject; he 
wastes his strength upon problems that have become 
obsolete ; he loses his way in paths that are not in the 
line of direction upon which the improved speculation 
is moving; or he gives narrow conjectural solutions of 
difficulties that have long since received sure and com- 
prehensive ones. It is as if a man should in these 
days attempt to colonize, and yet, through inertia or 
through ignorance, should leave behind him all modern 
resources of chemistry, of chemical agriculture, or of 
steam-power. Hazlitt had read nothing. Unacquaint- 
ed with Grecian philosophy, with Scholastic philoso- 
phy, and with the recomposition of these philosophies 
in the looms of Germany during the last sixty and odd 
years, trusting merely to the unrestrained instincts of 
keen mother- wit — whence should Hazlitt have had 
the materials for great thinking ? It is through the? 
collation of many abortive voyages to polar regiona 
that a man gains his first chance of entering the polai 



188 CHARLES XAMB. 

basiiij oi of running ahead on a true line of approach 
to it. The very reason for Hazlitt's defect in elo- 
quence as a lecturer, is sufficient also as a reason why 
he could not have been a comprehensive thinker. ' Ho 
was not eloquent,' says the Sergeant, ' in the true 
sense of the term.' But Avhy? Because it seems 'his 
Lhoughts were too weighty to be moved along by the 
shallow stream of feeling which an evening's excite- 
ment can rouse,' — an explanation which leaves us in 
doubt whether Hazlitt forfeited his chance of eloquence 
by accommodating himself to this evening's excite- 
ment, or by gloomily resisting it. Our own explana- 
tion is different ; Hazlitt was not eloquent, because he 
was discontinuous. No man can be eloquent whose 
thoughts are abrupt, insulated, capricious, and (to bor- 
row an impressive word from Coleridge) non-sequa- 
cious. Eloquence resides not in separate or fractional 
ideas, but in the relations of manifold ideas, and in the 
mode of their evolution from each other. It is not 
indeed enough that the ideas should be many, and 
their relations coherent ; the main condition lies in the 
key of the evolution, in the law of the succession. The 
elements are nothing without the atmosphere that 
moulds, and the dynamic forces that combine. Now 
Hazlitt's brilliancy is seen chiefly in separate splinter- 
ings of phrase or image which throw upon the eye a 
vitreous scintillation for a moment, but spread no deep 
s\iffusions of color, and distribiite no masses of mighty 
shadow. A flash, a solitary flash, and all is gone. 
Rhetoric, according to its quality, stands in many 
degrees of relation to the permanences of truth ; and 
all rhetoric, like all flesh, is partly unreal, and the 
glory of both is fleeting. Even the mighty rhetoric 



CHARLES LAMB. 189 

of Sir Thomas Browne, or Jeremy Taylor, to whom only 
it has been granted to open the trum^^et-stop on that 
great organ of passion, oftentimes leaves behind it the 
sense of sadness which belongs to beautiful apparitions 
starting out of darkness upon the morbid eye, only tc 
be reclaimed by darkness in the instant of their birth, 
or which belongs to pageantries in the clouds. But if 
all rhetoric is a mode of pyrotechny, and all pyrotech- 
nics are by necessity fugacious, yet even in these frail 
pomps, there are many degrees of frailty. Some fire- 
works require an hour's duration for the expansion of 
their glory ; others, as if formed from fulminating 
powder, expire in the very act of birth. Precisely on 
that scale of duration and of power stand the glitter- 
ings of rhetoric that are not worked into the texture, 
but washed on from the outside. Hazlitt's thoughts 
were of the same fractured and discontinuous order as 
his illustrative images — seldom or never self-diffusive ; 
and that is a sufficient argument that he had never 
cultivated philosophic thinking. 

Not, however, to conceal any part of the truth, we 
are bound to acknowledge that Lamb thought otherwise 
on this point, manifesting what seemed to us an extrav- 
agant admiration of Hazlitt, and perhaps even in part 
for that very glitter which we are denouncing — at least 
he did so in conversation with ourselves. But, on 
the other hand, as this conversation travelled a little 
into the tone of a disputation, and our frost on this point 
might seem to justify some undue fervor by way of 
balance, it is very possible that Lamb did not speak his 
absolute and most dispassionate judgment. And yet 
again, if he did, may we, with all reverence for Lamb's 
exquisite genius ha\e permission to say — that his own 



190 CHAKLES IAMB. 

constitution of intellect sinned by this very habit of dis- 
continuity. It was a habit of mind not unlikely to be 
cherished by his habits of life. Amongst these habits 
was the excess of his social kindness. He scorned so 
much to deny his company and his redundant hospi- 
tality to any man who manifested a wish for either by 
calling upon him, that he almost seemed to think it a 
criminality in himself if, by accident, he really was 
from home on your visit, rather than by possibility a 
negligence in you, that had not fore^varned him of your 
intention. All his life, from this and other causes, he 
must have read in the spirit of one liable to sudden 
interruption ; like a dragoon, in fact, reading with one 
foot in the stirrup, when expecting momentarily a 
summons to mount for action. In such situations, read- 
ing by snatches, and by intervals of precarious leisure, 
people form the habit of seeking and unduly valuing 
condensations of the meaning, where in reality the 
truth suffers by this short-hand exhibition, or else they 
demand too vivid illustrations of the meaning. Lord 
Chesterfield himself, so brilliant a man by nature, 
already therefore making a morbid estimate of bril- 
liancy, and so hurried throughout his life as a public 
man, read under this double coercion for craving instan- 
taneous effects. At one period, his only time for read- 
ing was in the morning, whilst under the hands of his 
hair-dresser ; compelled to take the hastiest of flying 
shots at his author, naturally he demanded a very con- 
spicuous mark to fire at. But the author could not, in 
80 brief a space, be always sure to crowd any very 
prominent objects on the eye, unless by being auda- 
ciously oracular and peremptory as regarded the senti- 
ment, or flashy in excess as regarded its expressioa, 



CHAKLES LAMB. 191 

« Come now. my friend,' was Lord Chesterfield' a 
morning adjuration to his author ; ' come now, cut it 
short — don't prose — don't hum and haw.' The 
author had douhtlcss no ambition to enter his name on 
the honorable and ancient roll of gentleman prosers ; 
probably he conceived himself not at all tainted with 
the asthmatic infirmity of humming and hawing ; but 
as to ' cutting it short,' how could he be sure of meet- 
ing his lordship's expectations in that point, unless by 
dismissing the limitations that might be requisite to fit 
the idea for use, or the adjuncts that might be requisite to 
integrate its truth, or the final consequences that might 
involve some deep arriere -pensee, which, coming last 
in the succession, might oftentimes be calculated to lie 
deepest on the mind. To be lawfully and usefully 
brilliant after this rapid fashion, a man must come 
forward as a refresher of old truths, where his suppres- 
sions are supplied by the reader's memory ; not as an 
expounder of new truths, where oftentimes a dislocated 
fraction of the true is more dangerous than the false 
itself. 

To read therefore habitually, by hurried instalments, 
has this bad tendency — that it is likely to found a taste 
for modes of composition too artificially irritating, and 
to disturb the equilibrium of the judgment in relation 
to the colorings of style. Lamb, however, whose con- 
stitution of mind was even ideally sound in reference 
to the natural, the simple, the genuine, might seem of 
all men least liable to a taint in this direction. And 
undoubtedly he was so, as regarded those modes of 
beauty which nature had specially qualified him for 
apprehending. Else, and in relation to other modea 
of beauty, where his sense of the true, and of its flis- 



192 CHAKLES LAMB. 

tinction from the spurious, had been an acquired sense, 
it is impossible for us to hide from ourselves — that not 
through habits only, not through stress of injurious 
accidents only, but by original structure and tempera 
ment of mind, Lamb had a bias towards those very 
defects on which rested the startling characteristics of 
style which we have been noticing. He himself, we 
fear, not bribed by indulgent feelings to another, not 
moved by friendship, but by native tendency, shrank 
from the continuous, from the sustained, from the 
elaborate. 

The elaborate, indeed, without which much truth and 
beauty must perish in germ, was by name the object of 
his invectives. The instances are many, in his own 
beautiful essays, where he literally collajDses, literally 
sinks away from openings suddenly offering themselves 
to flights of pathos or solemnity in direct prosecution 
of his own theme. On any such summons where an 
ascending impulse, and an untired pinion were required, 
he refuses himself (to use military language) invaria- 
bly. The least observing reader of Elia cannot have 
failed to notice that the most felicitous passages always 
accomplish their circuit in a few sentences. The gyra- 
tion within which the sentiment wheels, no matter of 
what kind it may be, is always the shortest possible. 
It does not prolong itself, and it does not repeat itself. 
But in fact, other features in Lamb's mind would have 
argued this feature by analogy, had we by accident 
been left unaware of it directly. It is not by cliancf, 
or without a deep ground in his nature, common to all 
his qualities, both affirmative and negative, that Lamb 
had an insensibility to music more absolute that can 
have been often shared by any human creature, or 



CHAHLES LAMB. 193 

pcrliaj)9 than was ever before acknowledged so can- 
didly. The sense of mnsic, — as a pleasurable sunse, 
or as anj' sense at all other than of certain unmeaning 
and impertinent differences in respect to high and low, 
sharj) or flat, — was iitterlj- obliterated as with a sponge 
by nature herself from Lamb's organization. It was a 
corollarj', from the same large suhslratum in his nature, 
that Lamb had no sense of the rhythmical in prose 
compositions. Rhythmus, or pomp of cadence, or so- 
norous ascent of clauses, in the structure of sentences, 
were effects of art as much thrown away upon Mm as 
the voice of the charmer upon the deaf adder. We 
ourselves, occupying the very station of polar opposi- 
tion to that of Lamb, being as morbidly, perhaps, in 
the one excess as he in the other, naturally detected 
this omission in Lamb's nature at an early stage of our 
acquaintance. Not the fabled Regulus with his eye- 
lids torn away, and his uncurtained eye-balls exposed 
to the noon-tide glare of a Carthaginian sun, coiild have 
shrieked with more anguish of recoil from torture than 
we from certain sentences and periods in which Lamb 
perceived no fault at all. Pomp, in our apprehension, 
■was an idea of two categories ; the pompous might be 
spurious, but it might also be genuine. It is well to 
love the simple — we love it ; nor is there any opposition 
at all between that and the very glory of pomp. But, 
as we once put the case to Lamb, if, as a musician, as 
the leader of a mighty orchestra, you had this theme 
ofTered to you — ' Belshazzar the king gave a great 
frast to a thousand of his lords ' — or this, ' And on 
* certain day, Marcus Cicero stood up, and in a set 
speech rendered solemn thanks to Caius Cpesar for 
Quintus Ligarius pardoned, and for Marcus Marcellu'' 
17 



194 CHAELES IAMB. 

restored ' — surely no man would deny that, in such a 
case, simplicity, though in a passive sense not lawfully 
absent, must stand aside as totally insufficient for the 
positive part. Simplicity might guide, even here, but 
could not furnish the power ; a rudder it might be, but 
not an oar or a sail. This, Lamb was ready to allow ; 
as an intellectual quiddity, he recognized pomp in the 
character of a privileged thing ; he was obliged to do 
so ; for take away from great ceremonial festivals, 
such as the solemn rendering of thanks, the celebration 
of national anniversaries, the commemoration of public 
benefactors, &c., the element of pomp, and you take 
away their very meaning and life ; but, whilst allowing , 
a place for it in the rubric of the logician, it is certain 
that, sensuously, Lamb would not have sympathized 
with it, nor have feJt its justification in any concrete 
instance. We find a difficulty in px;rsuing this subject, 
Avithout greatly exceeding our limits. We pause, 
therefore, and add only this one suggestion as partly 
explanatory of the case. Lamb had the dramatic in- 
tellect and taste, perhaps, in perfection ; of the Epic, 
he had none at all. Here, as happens sometimes to 
men of genius pretcrnaturally endowed in one direction, 
he might be considered as almost starved. A favorite 
of nature, so eminent in some directions, by what right 
could he complain that her bounties were not indis- 
criminate ? From this defect in his nature it arose, 
that, except by culture and by reflection. Lamb hg,d no 
genial appreciation of Milton. The solemn planetary 
wheelings of the Paradise Lost were not to his taste. 
What he did comprehend, were the motions like those 
of lightning, the fierce angular coruscations of that wild 
agency which comes forward so vividly in the sudden 



chaki.es lamb. 195 

ntni-jiTTfiu, in the revolutlonaiy catastrophe, and in the 
tumultuous conflicts, through persons or through situ- 
ations, of the tragic drama. 

There is another vice in Mr. Hazlitt's mode of com- 
position, viz., the habit of trite quotation, too common 
to have challenged much notice, were it not for these 
reasons : 1st, That Sergeant Talfourd speaks of it in 
equivocal terms, as a fault perhaps, but as a ' felici- 
tous ' fault, ' trailing after it a line of golden asso na- 
tions ; ' 2dly, because the practice involves a dishon- 
esty. On occasion of No. 1, we must profess our belief 
that a more ample explanation from the Sergeant would 
have left him in substantial harmony with ourselves. 
We cannot conceive the author of Ion, and the friend 
of Wordsworth, seriously to countenance that paralytic 
' mouth-diarrhcea,' (to borrow a phrase of Coleridge's) 
— that Jliixe de bouc/ie (to borrow an earlier phrase of 
Archbishop Huet's,) which places the reader at the 
mercy of a man's tritest remembrances from his most 
school-boy reading. To have the verbal memory 
infested with tags of verse and ' cues ' of rhyme is in 
itself an infirmity as vulgar and as morbid as the stable- 
boy's habit of whistling slang airs upon the mere me- 
chanical excitement of a bar or two whistled by some 
other blockhead in some other stable. The very stage 
has grown weary of ridiculing a folly, that having been 
long since expelled from decent society has taken 
refuge amongst the most imbecile of authors. Was 
Mr. Hazlitt then of that class ? No ; he was a man of 
gi-eat talents, and of capacity for greater things than ho 
ever attempted, though without any pretensions of the 
philosophic kind ascribed, to him by the Sergeant. 
Meantime the reason for resisting the « example and 



196 CHAKLES LAMB. 

practice of Hazlitt lies in this — tliat essentially it is at 
waj with sincerity, the foundation of all good writing, 
to express one's own thoughts by another man's words. 
This dilemma arises. The thought is, or it is not, 
worthy of that emphasis which belongs to a metrical 
expression of it. If it is not, then we shall be guilty of 
a mere folly in pushing into strong /elief that which 
confessedly cannot support it. If it is, then how in- 
credible that a thought strongly conceived, and bearing 
about it the impress of one's own individuality, should 
naturally, and without dissimulation or falsehood, bend 
to anotl^er man's expression of it ! Simply to back 
one's own view, by a similar view derived from another, 
may be useful; a quotation that repeats one's own 
sentiment, but in a varied form, has the grace which 
belongs to the idejn in alio, the same radical idea ex- 
pressed with a difference — similarity in dissimilarity ; 
but to throw one's own thoughts, matter and form, 
through alien organs so absolutely as to make another 
man one's interpreter for evil and good, is either to 
confess a singular laxity of thinking that can so flexibly 
adapt itself to any casual form of words, or else to 
confess that sort of carelessness about the expression" 
which draws its real origin from a sense of indifference 
about the things to be expressed. Utterly at war this 
distressing practice is with all simplicity and earnest- 
ness of writing ; it argues a state of indolent ease 
inconsistent with the pressure and coersion of strong 
fermenting thoughts, before we can be at leisure for 
idle or chance quotations. But lastly, in reference to 
No. 2, we must add that the j^i'actice is signally dis- 
honest. It ' trails after it a line of golden associations.' 
Yea and the burglar, who leaves an army-tailor's after 



CHARLES LAMB. 19? 

ft -aiihiigcit; visit, trails after him perhaps a long roll of 
gold bullion epaulettes which may look pretty by lamp- 
light. 

But that, in the present condition of moral philosophy 
amongst the police, is accounted robbery ; and to 
benefit too much by quotations is little less. At this 
moment we have in our eye a work, at one time not 
without celebrity, which is one continued cento of 
splendid passages from other people. The natural effect 
from so much fine writing is, that the reader rises with 
the impression of having been engaged upon a most 
eloquent W'ork. Meantime the whole is a series of 
mosaics ; a tessellation made up from borrowed frag- 
ments : and first, when the reader's attention is ex- 
pressly directed upon the fact, he becomes aware that 
the nominal author has contributed nothing more to the 
book than a few passages of transition, or brief clauses 
of connection. 

In the year 1796, the main incident occurring of any 
importance for English literature was the publication 
by Soifthey of an epic poem. This poem, the Joan of 
Arc, was the earliest work of much pretension amongst 
all that Southey wrote ; and by many degrees it was 
the worst. In the four great narrative poems of his 
later years, there is a combination of two striking 
qualities, viz., a peculiar command over the visually 
splendid, connected with a deep-toned grandeur of 
moral pathos. Especially we find this union in the 
Thalaba and the Roderick ; but in the Joan of Arc w^e 
miss it. What splendor there is for the fancy and the 
eye belongs chiefly to the Vision, contiibuted by Coler- 
idge, and this was subsequently withdrawn. Tha 
fault lay in Southey's political relations at that era ; 



198 CHABLES XAMB. 

his sympatliy with the French Revolution in its earlier 
stages had been boundless ; in all respects it was a 
noble sympathy, fading only as the gorgeous coloring 
faded from the emblazonries of that awful event, droop- 
ing only when the promises of that golden dawn sick- 
ened under stationary eclipse. In 1796, Southey was 
yet under the tyranny of his own earliest fascination ; 
in his eyes the Revolution had suffered a momentary 
blight from refluxes of panic ; but blight of some kind 
is incident to every harvest on which human hopes are 
suspended. Bad auguries were also ascending from 
the unchaining of martial instincts. But that the Rev- 
olution, having ploughed its way through unparalleled 
storms, wag preparing to face other storms, did but 
quicken the apprehensiveness of his love — did but 
quicken the duty of giving utterance to this lovo. 
Hence came the rapid composition of the poem, which 
cost less time in writing than in printing. Hence, also, 
came the choice of his heroine. What he needed in 
his central character was, a heart with a capacity for 
the wrath of Hebrew prophets applied to ancient 
abuses, and for evangelic pity applied to the sufferings 
of nations. This heart, with this double capacity — 
where should he seek it ? A French heart it must be, 
or how should it follow with its sympathies a French 
movement ? There lay Southey's reason for adopting 
the Maid of Orleans as the depositary of hopes and 
aspirations on behalf of France as fervid as his own. 
In choosing this heroine, so inadequately known at 
that time, Southey testified at least his own nobility 
of feeling; 3 but in executing his choice, he and his 
friends overlooked two faults fatal to his purpose. 
One was this : sympathy with the French Revolutioa 



CHAKLES LAMB. 199 

meant sympathy with the opening prospects of rr.an — 
meant sympathy with the Pariah of every clime — with 
all that suffered social wrong, or saddened in hopeless 
bondage. 

That was the movement at work in the French Rev- 
olution. But the movement of Joanna d'Arc took a 
different direction. In her day also, it is true, the 
human heart had yearned after the same vast enfran- 
chisement for her children of labor as afterwards 
worked in the great vision of the French Revolution. 
In her days also, and shortly before them, the human 
hand had sought by bloody acts to realize this dream of 
the heart. And in her childhood, Joanna had not been 
insensible to these premature motions upon a path too 
bloody and too dark to be safe. But this view of hu- 
man misery had been utterly absorbed to her by the 
special misery then desolating France. The lilies of 
France had been trampled underfoot by the conquering 
stranger. Within fifty years, in three pitched battles 
that resounded to the ends of the earth, the chivalry of 
France had been exterminated. Her oriflamme had 
been dragged through the dust. The eldest son of 
Baptism had been prostrated. The daughter of France 
had been surrendered on coercion as a bride to her 
English conqueror. The child of that marriage, so 
ignominious to the land, was king of France by the 
consent of Christendom ; that child's uncle domineered 
as regent of France ; and that child's armies were in 
military possession of the land. But were they undis- 
puted masters ? No ; and there precisely lay the sor- 
row of the time. Under a perfect conquest there would 
have been repose ; whereas the presence of the Eng- 
lish armies did but furnish a pica, masking itself in 



200 * CHARXES LAME. 

patriotism, for gatlicrings everywhere of lawless ma- 
rauders ; of soldiers that had deserted their banners ; 
and of robbers by profession. This was the woe of 
France more even than the military dishonor. That 
dishonor had been palliated from the first by the gene- 
alogical pretensions of the English royal family to the 
French throne, and these pretensions were strengthened 
in the person of the present claimant. But the military 
desolation of France, this it was that woke the faith of 
Joanna in her own heavenly mission of deliverance. 
It was the attitude of her prostrate country, crying 
night and day for purification from blood, and not from 
feudal oppression, that swallowed up the thoughts of 
the impassioned girl. But that was not the cry tliat 
uttered itself afterwards in the French Revolution. 
In Joanna's days, the first step towards rest for France 
was by expulsion of the foreigner. Independence of a 
foreign yoke, liberation as between people and people, 
was the one ransom to be paid for French honor and 
peace. That debt settled, there might come a time for 
thinking of civil liberties. But this time was not within 
the prospects of the poor sheperdess. The field — 
the area of her sympathies — never coincided with that 
of a Revolutionary period. It followed, therefore, 
that Southey could not have raised Joanna (with her 
condition of feeling) by any management, into the 
interpreter of his own. That was the first error in his 
poem, and it was irremediable. The second was — 
and strangely enough this also escaped notice — that 
the heroine of Southey is made to close her career pre- 
cisely at the point when its grandeur commences. She 
believed herself to have a mission for the deliverance 
of France ; and the great instrument which she was 



CHARLES LAMB. 201 

Authorized to use towards this end, was the king, 
Charles VII. Him she was to crown. With this 
coronation, her triumph, in the plain historical sense, 
ended. And there ends Southey's poem. But ex- 
actly at this point, the grander stage of her mission 
commences, viz., the ransom which she, a solitary 
girl, paid in her own person for the national deliver- 
ance. The grander half of the story was thus sacri- 
ficed, as being irrelevant to Southey's political object ; 
and yet, after all, the half which he retained did not 
at all symbolize that object. It is singular, indeed, 
to find a long jwem, on an ancient subject, adapting 
itself hieroglyphically to a modern purpose ; 2dly, to 
find it failing of this purpose ; and 3dly, if it had 
not failed, so planned that it could have succeeded 
only by a sacrifice of all that was grandest in the 
theme. 

To these capital oversights, Southey, Coleridge, and 
Lamb, were all joint parties ; the two first as concerned 
in the composition, the last as a frank though friendly 
reviewer of it in his private correspondence with 
Coleridge. It is, however, some palliation of these 
oversights, and a very singular fact in itself, that 
neither from English authorities nor from French, 
though the two nations were equally brought into close 
connection with the career of that extraordinary girl, 
could any adequate view be obtained of her character 
and acts. The official records of her trial, apart from 
which nothing can be depended upon, were first in the 
c )urse of publication from the Paris press during the 
currency of last year. First in 1847, about four 
Hundred and sixteen years after her ashes had been 
dispersed to the winds, could it be seen distinctly 



202 CHAKLES XAMB. 

tlirougli the clouds of fierce partisanships and tiatit)nal 
prejudices, what had been the frenzy of the persecu- 
tion against her, and the utter desolation of her posi- 
tion ; what had been the grandeur of her conscientious 
exia tence. 

Anxious that our readers should see Lamb from as 
u\any angles as possible, Ave have obtained from an 
old friend of his a memorial — slight, but such as the 
circumstances allowed — of an evening spent with 
Charles and Mary Lamb, in the winter of 1821-22. 
The record is of the most unambitious character ; it 
pretends to nothing as the reader will see, not so 
much as to a pun, which it really required some 
singularity of luck to have missed from Charles Lamb, 
Avho often continued to fire puns, as minute guns, all 
through the evening. But the more unpretending this 
record is, the more appropriate it becomes by that very 
fact to the memory of Mm who, amongst all authors, 
was the humblest and least pretending. "We have 
often thought that the famous epitaph written for his 
grave by Piron, the cynical author of La Metromanie, 
might have come from Lamb, were it not for one 
objection ; Lamb's benign heart would have recoiled 
from a sarcasm, however eff"ective, inscribed upon a 
grave-stone ; or from a jest, however playful, that 
tended to a vindictive sneer amongst his own farewell 
words. We once translated this Piron epitaph into a 
kind of rambling Drayton couplet ; and the only point 
needing explanation is, that, from the accident of 
scientific men, fellows of the Royal Society being 
"usually very solemn men, with an extra chance, there- 
fore, for being dull men in conversation, naturally it 
arose that sout^ wit amongst our great-grandfathers 



CHAKLES LAMB. 208 

translated F. R-. S. into a short-hand expression for a 
Fellow Remarkably Stupid; to which version of the 
three letters our English epitaph alludes. The French 
original of Piron is this : 

« Ci git Pii-on ; qui ne fut rien; 
Pus meuic academicicn.' 

The bitter arrow of the second line was feathered to 
hit the French Acaderaie, who had declined to elect 
him a member. Our translation is this : 

♦ Here lies Piron ; who was — uothiiig ; or, if that could be, 

was less : 
How ! — nothing? Yes, nothing; not so much as F. R. S.' 

But now to our friend's memorandum : 

" October 6, 1848. 
"Mv DEAR X. — You ask me for some memorial, 
however trivial, of any dinner party, supper party, 
water party, no matter what, that I can circumstan- 
tially recall to recollection, by any features whatever, 
puns or repartees, -wisdom or wit, connecting it with 
Charles Lamb. I grieve to say that my meetings of 
a/iy sort with Lamb were few, though spread through 
a score of years. That sounds odd for one that loved 
Lamb so entirely, and so much venerated his character. 
But the reason was, that I so seldom visited London, 
and Lamb so seldom quitted it. Somewhere about 
1810 and 1812 I must have met Lamb repeatedly at 
the Courier Office in the Strand ; that is, at Coleridge's, 
to whom, as an intimate friend, Mr. Stuart (a projarie- 
tor of the paper) gave up for a time the use of some 
rooms in the office. Thither, in the London season, 
(May especially and June,) resorted Lamb, Godwin, 
Sir H. Davy, and, once or twice, Wordsworth, Avho 
visited Sir George Beaumont's Leicestershire residence 



204 CHARLES LAMB. 

of Coleorton early in tlie spring, and thon travelled 
up to Grosvenor Square with Sir George and Lady 
Beaumont: ^ sj^ectiUum veniens, vettiens spectelur at 
ipse.' 

But in these miscellaneous gatherings, Lamb said 
little except when an opening arose for a pun. And 
how effectual that sort of small shot was from him^ I 
need not say to anybody who remembers his infirmity 
of stammering, and his dexterous management of it 
for purposes of light and shade. He was often able to 
train the roll of stammers in settling upon the words 
immediately preceding the effective one ; by wliich 
means the key-note of the jest or sarcasm, benefiting 
by the sudden liberatioir of his embargoed voice, was 
delivered with the force of a pistol shot. That stam- 
mer was worth an annuity to him as an ally of his wit. 
Firing under cover of that advantage, he did triple 
execution ; for, in the first place, the distressing sym- 
pathy of the hearers with his distress of utterance won 
for him unavoidably the silence of deep attention ; and 
then, whilst he had us all hoaxed into this attitude of 
mute suspense by an appearance of distress that he 
perhaps did not really feel, down came a plunging shot 
into the very thick of us, with ten times the effect it 
would else have had. If his stammering, however, 
often did him true ' yeoman's service,' sometimes it 
led him into scrapes. Coleridge told me of a ludicrous 
embarrassment which it caused him at Hastings. Lamb 
had been medically advised to a course of sea-bathing ; 
and accordingly at the door of his bathing machine, 
whilst he stood shivering with cold, two stout fellows 
laid hold of him, one at each shoulder, like heraldic 
supporters : they waited for the word of command 



CHARLES LAMB. 205 

from their principal, who began the following oration 
to them : ' Hear me, men ! Take notice of this — I 
am to be dipped.' What more he would have said is 
unknown to land or sea or bathing machines ; for 
having reached the word dipped, he commenced such a 
rolling fire of Di — di — di — di, that when at length 
lie descended a j)lo7nb upon the full word dipped, tlie 
two men, rather tired of the long suspense, became 
satisfied that they had reached what lawyers call the 
' operative clause ' of the sentence ; and both exclaim- 
ing at once, ' Oh yes, Sir, we're quite aware of that,^ 
down they plunged him into the sea. On emerging, 
Lamb sobbed so much from the cold, that he found 
no voice suitable to his indignation ; from necessity he 
seemed tranquil ; and again addressing the men, who 
stood respectfully listening, he began thus : ' Men ! is 
it possible to obtain your attention ? ' ' Oh surely, 
Sir,^by all means.' ' Then listen : once more I tell 
you, I am to be di — di — di — ' — and then, with a 

burst of indignation, ' dipped, I tell you,' ' Oh 

decidedly, Sir,' rejoined the men, ' decidedly,' and 
down the stammerer went for the second time. Petri- 
fied with cold and wrath, once more Lamb made a 
feeble attempt at explanation — ' Grant me pa — pa — 
patience ; is it mum — um — murder you me — me — 
mean? Again and a — ga — ga — gain, I tell you, 
I'm to be di — di — di — dipped,' now speaking furi- 
ously, with the voice of an injured man. ' Oh yes. 
Sir,' the men replied, ' we know that, we fully under- 
stood it,' and for the third time down v»'-ent Lamb into 
the sea. ' Oh limbs of Satan ! ' he said, on coming up 
for the third time, ' it's now too late ; I tell you that I 
am — no, that I was — to be di — di — di — dipped 
only onr/',.^ 



206 CHAKLES LAMB. 

Since the rencontres with Lamb at Coleridge's, I 
had met him once or twice at literary dinner parties. 
One of these occurred at the house oi Messrs. Taylor 
& Hesscy, the publishers. I myself was suffering too 
much from illness at the time to take any pleasure 
in what passed, or to notice it with any vigilance of 
attention. Lamb, I remember, as usual, Avas full of 
gayety ; and as usual he rose too rapidly to the zenith 
of his gayety ; for he shot upwards like a rocket, and, 
as usual, people said he was ' tipsy.' To me Lamb 
never seemed intoxicated, but at most aerially elevated. 
He never talked nonsense, which is a great point 
gained ; nor polemically, which is a greater ; for it is 
a dreadful thing to find a drunken man bent upon con- 
verting oneself ; nor sentimentally, which is greatest of 
all. You can stand a man's fraternizing with you ; or 
if he swears an eternal friendship only once in an 
hour, you do not think of calling the police ; but once 
in every three minutes is too much. Lamb did none 
of these things ; he was always rational, quiet, and 
gentlemanly in his habits. Nothing memorable, I am 
sure, passed upon this occasion, which was in Novem- 
ber, of 1821 ; and yet the dinner was memorable by 
means of one fact not discovered until many years 
later. Amongst the company of all literary men, sate 
a murderer, and a murderer of a freezing class; cool, 
calculating, wholesale in his operations, and moving all 
along under the advantages of unsuspecting domestic 
confidence and domestic opportunities. This was Mr. 
Wainwright, who was subsequently brought to trial, 
but not for any of his murders, and transported for life. 
The story has been told by Sergeant Talfourd, in the 
second volume of these ' Final Memoirs,' and pre* 



CHARLES LAMB. 207 

vioiisly by Sir Edward B. Lytton. Both liave been 
much blamed for the use made of this extraordinary 
case ; but we know not why. In itself it is a most 
remarkable case, for more reasons than one. It is 
remarkable for the apalling revelation which it makes 
of power spread through the hands of people not liable 
to suspicion, for purposes the most dreadful. It is 
remarkable also by the contrast which existed in this 
case between the murderer's appearance, and the ter- 
rific purposes with which he Avas always dallying. 
He was a contributor to a journal in which I also had 
written several papers. This formed a shadowy link 
between us ; and, ill as I was, I looked more attentive- 
ly at him than at anybody else. Yet there were 
several men of wit and genius present, amongst whom 
Lamb (as I have said), and Thomas Hood, Hamilton 
Reynolds, and Allan Cunningham. But them I already 
knew, whereas Mr. W. I now saw for the first time and 
the last. What interested me about him was this, the 
papers which had been pointed out to me as his, 
(signed Janus Weathercock, Vinkhooms, &;c.) were 
written in a spirit of coxcombry that did not so much 
disgust as amuse. The writer could not conceal the 
ostentatious pleasure which he took in the luxurious 
fittings up of his rooms, in the fancied splendor of his 
bijouterie, &c. Yet it was easy for a man of any 
experience to read two facts in all this idle etalage ; 
one being, that his finery was but of a second-rate 
order ; the other, that he was a parvenu, not' at home 
even amongst his second-rate splendor. So far there 

was nothing to distinguish Mr. W 's papers from 

the papers of other triflcrs. But in this point there 
was, viz., that in his judgmon<"-s upon the great Italian 



208 CHARLES LAMB. 

masters of painting, Da Vinci, Titian, &c., tliere 
seemed a tone of sinceritj' and of native sensibility, aa 
in one who spoke from himself, and was not merely a 
copier from book?. This it was that interested me ; 
as also his reviews of the chief Italian engravers, 
Morghen, Volpato, &c. ; not for the manner, which 
overflowed with levities and impertinence, but for thvj 
substance of his judgments in those cases where I 
happened to have had an opportunity of judging for 
myself. Here arose also a claim upon Lamb's atten- 
tion ; for Lamb and his sister had a deep feeling for 
what was excellent in painting. Accordingly Lamb 
paid him a great deal of attention, and continued to 
speak of him for years with an interest that seemed 
dispropqrtioned to his pretensions. This might be 
owing in part to an indirect compliment paid to Miss 

Lamb in one of W 's papers ; else his appearance 

would rather have repelled Lamb ; it was common- 
place, and better suited to express the dandyism whicL 
overspread the surface of his manner, than the unaf 
fected sensibility which apparently lay in his nature 
Dandy or not, however, this man, on account of thu 
schism in his papers, so much amiable puppyism on 
one side, so much deep feeling on the other, (feeling, 
applied to some of the grandest objects that earth has 
to show,) did rea^iy move a trifle of interest in me, on 
a day when I hated the face of man and woman. Yet 
again, if I had known this man for the murderer that 
even theri he was, what sudden loss of interest, what 
sudden growth of another interest, would have changed 
the face of that party ! Trivial creature, that didst 
carry thy dreadful eye kindling with perpetual trea- 
sons ! Dreadful creature, that didst carry thy trivial 



CHARLES LAMB. 209 

eye, niantlinjj Avith eternal levity, over tin.; sleeping 
surfaces of confiding houseliokl life — oh, what a 
revolution for man wouldst thou have accomplished 
had thy deep wickedness prospered ! What teas that 
wickedness ? In a few words I will say. 

At this time (October 1848) the whole British island 
is appalled by a new chapter in the history of poison- 
ing. Locusta in ancient Rome, Madame Brinvillicrs 
in Paris, were people of original genius : not in any 
new artifice of toxicology, not in the mere manage- 
ment of poisons, was the audacity of their genius dis- 
played. No ; but in profiting by domestic openings 
for murder, unsuspected through their very atrocity. 
Such an opening was made same years ago by those 
who saw the possibility of founding purses for parents 
upon the murder of their children. This was done 
upon a larger scale than had been suspected, and upon 
a plausible pi-etence. To bury a corpse is costly ; but 
of a hundred children only a few, in the ordinary 
course of mortality, will die within a given time. 
Five shillings a-piece will produce £25 annually, and 
that will bury a considerable number. On this princi- 
ple arose Infant Burial Societies. For a few shillings 
annually, a parent could secure a funeral for every 
child. If the child died, a few guineas fell due to the 
parent, ana the funeral was accomplished without cost 
of his. But on this arose the suggestion — Why not 
execute an insurance of this nature twenty times over^ 
One single insurance pays for the funeral — the other 
nineteen are so much clear gain, a Iiicro pdhatur, for 
the parents. Yes; but on the supposition that the 
child died ! twenty are no better than one, unless thoy 
are gathered into the garner. Now, if the child died 
18 



210 CHAKLES LAMB. 

naturally, all was right ; but how, if the child did not 
die ? Why, clearly this, — the child that ccm die, and 
won't die, may be made to die. There are many ways 
of doing that ; and it is shocking to know, that, ac- 
cording to recent discoveries, poison is comparatively a 
very merciful mode of murder. Six years ago a 
dreadful communication was made to the public by a 
medical man, viz., that three thousand children were 
annually burned to death under circumstances showing 
too clearly that they had been left by their mothers 
with the means and the temptations to set themselves 
on fire in her absence. But more shocking, because 
more lingering, are the deaths by artificial appliances 
of wet, cold, hunger, bad diet, and disturbed sleep, to 
the frail constitutions of children. By that machinery 
it is, and not by poison, that the majority qualify 
themselves for claiming the funeral allowances. Here, 
however, there occur to any man, on reflection, two 
eventual restraints on the extension of this domestic 
curse : — 1st, as there is no pretext for wanting more 
than one funeral on account of one child, any insur- 
ances beyond one are in themselves a ground of sus- 
picion. Now, if any plan were devised for securing 
the puilication of such insurances, the suspicions 
would travel as fast as the grounds for them. 2dly, 
it occurs, that eventually the evil checks itself, since 
a society established on the ordinary rates of mortality 
would be ruined when a murderous stimulation was 
applied to that rate too extensively. Still it is certain 
that, for a season, this Mrocity has prospered in manu- 
facturing districts for some years, and more recently, 
as judicial investigations have shown, in one agricul- 
tural district of Essex. Now, Mr. W. 's scheme 



CHARLES LAMB. 211 

of murder was, in its outline, the very same, "but not 
applied to the narrow purpose of obtaining burials 
from a public fund. He persuaded, for instance, two 
beautiful young ladies, visitors in his family, to insure 
their lives for a short period of two years. This in- 
surance was repeated in several different offices, until 
a sum of £18,000 had been secured in the event of 

their deaths within the two years. Mr. W took 

care that they should die, and very suddenly, within 
that period ; and then, having previously secured from 
his victims an assignment to himself of this claim, he 
endeavored to make this assignment available. But 
the offices, which had vainly endeavored to extract 
from the young ladies any satisfactory account of the 
reasons for this limited insurance, had their suspicions 
at last strongly roused. One office had recently ex- 
perienced a case of the same nature, in which also 
the young lady had been poisoned by the man in 
whose behalf she had effected the insurance ; all the 
offices declined to paj'^ ; actions at law arose ; in the 
course of the investigation which followed, Mr. W.'s 
character was fully exposed. Finally, in the midst 
of the embarrassments which ensued, he committed 
forgery, and was transported. 

From this Mr. W , some few days afterwards, I 

received an invitation to a dinner party, expressed in 
terms that were obligingly earnest. He mentioned 
the names of his principal guests, and amongst them 
rested most upon those of Lamb and Sir David Wilkie. 
From an accident I was unable to attend, and greatly 
regretted it. Sir David one might rarely happen to 
Bee, except at a crowded party. But as regarded 
Lamb, I was sure to see him or to hear of him again 



212 CHARLES LAMB. 

ill some waj* or other within a short time. This op- 
portunity, in fact, offered itself within a month through 
the kindness of the Lambs themselves. Thay had 
heard of my being in solitary lodgings, and insisted on 
my coming to dine with them, which more than once 
I did in the winter of 1821-22. 

The mere reception by the Lambs was so full of 
goodness and hospitable feeling, that it kindled anima- 
tion in the most cheerless or torpid of invalids. I can- 
not imagine that any memorahilia occurred during the 
visit ; but I will use the time that would else be lost 
upon the settling of that point, in putting down any 
triviality that occurs to my recollection. Both Lamb 
and myself had a furious love for nonsense, headlong 
nonsense. Excepting Professor Wilson, I have known 
nobody who had the same passion to the same extent. 
And things of that nature better illustrate the realities 
of Lamb's social life than the gravities, which weighing 
so sadly on his solitary hours he sought to banish from 
his moments of relaxation. 

There were no strangers ; Charles Lamb, his sister, 
and myself made up the_ party. Even this was done 
in kindness. They knew that I should have been 
oppressed by an effort such as must be made in the 
society of strangers ; and they placed me by their own 
fireside, where I could say as little or as much as I 
pleased. 

We dined about five o'clock, and it was one of tne 
hospitalities inevitable to the Lambs, that any game 
which they might receive from rural friends in the 
course of the week, was reserved for the day of a 
friend's dining with them. 

In regard to wine, Lamb and myself had the samts 



CHARLES liAlVIB. 213 

habit — perhaps it rose to the dignity of a principle — ■ 
viz., to take a great deal during dinner — none after it. 
Consequently, as Miss Lamb (who drank only water) 
retired almost with the dinner itself, nothing remained 
for men of our principles, tho- rigor of which we had 
illustrated by taking rather too much of old port before 
the cloth was drawn, except talking ; amoebocan collo- 
quy, or, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, a dialogue of ' brisk 
reciprocation.' But this was impossible ; over Lamb, 
at this period of his life, there passed regularly, after 
taking wine, a brief eclipse of sleep. It descended 
upon him as softly as a shadow. In a gross person, 
laden Avith superfluous flesh, and sleeping heavily, this 
Avould have been disagreeable ; but in Lamb, thin even 
to meagreness, spare and wiry as an Arab of the desert, 
or as Thomas Aquinas, wasted by scholastic vigils, the 
affection of sleep seemed rather a network of aerial 
gossamer than of earthly cobweb — more like a golden 
haze falling upon him gently from the heavens than a 
cloud exhaling upwards from the flesh.* Motionless in 
his chair as a bust, breathing so gently as scarcely to 
seem certainly alive, he presented the image of repose 
midwa)' between life and death, like the repose of 
sculpture ; and to one who knew his history, a repose 
affectingly contrasting with the calamities and internal 
storms of his life. I have heard more persons than I 
can now distinctly recall, observe r>^ Lamb when sleep- 
ing, that his coiuitenance in that state assumed an 
expression almost seraphic, from its intellectual beauty 
of outline, its childlike simplicity and its benignity. 
It could not be called a transfiguration that sleep had 
worked in his face ; for the features wore essentially 
tne same expression when waking ; but sleep spiritual' 



214 CHAELES LAMB. 

ized that expression, exalted it, and also tarmonized it. 
Much of the change lay in that last process. The eyes 
it was that disturbed the unity of effect in Lamb's 
waking face. They gave a restlessness to the charac- 
ter of his intellect, shifting, like northern lights, through 
every mode of combination with fantastic playfulness, 
and sometimes by fiery gleams obliterating for the mo- 
ment that pure light of benignity which was the pre- 
dominant reading on his features. Some people have 
supposed that Lamb had Jewish blood in his veins, 
which seemed to account for his gleaming eyes. It 
might be so ; but this notion found little confidence in 
Lamb's own way of treating the gloomy mediseval tra- 
ditions propagated throughout Europe about the Jews, 
and their secret enmity to Christian races. Lamb, i:i- 
deed, might not be more serious than Shakspeare is 
supposed to have been in his Shylock ; yet he spoke at 
times as from a station of wilful bigotry, and seemed 
(whether laughingly or not) to sympathize with the 
barbarous Christian superstitions upon the pretended 
bloody practices of the Jews, and of the early Jewish 
physicians. Being himself a Lincoln man, he treated 
Sir Hugh'^ of Lincoln, the young child that suff'ered 
death by secret assassination in the Jewish quarter 
rather than suppress his daily anthems to the Virgin, as 
a true historical personage on the rolls of martyrdom : 
careless that this fable, like that of the apprentice mur- 
dered out of jealousy by his master, the architect, had 
destroyed its own authority by ubiquitous diff'usion. 
All over Europe the same legend of the murdered ap- 
prentice and the martyred child reappears under differ- 
ent nanies — so that in eff'ect the verification of the tale 
ia none a' all^ because it is unanimous ; is too narrow, 



CHARLES LAMB. 215 

because it is too impossibly broad. Lamb, bowever, 
thougb it was often bard to say wbetber be were not 
secretly laugbing, swore to tbe trutb of all tbese old 
fables, and treated tbe liberalities of tbe present gene- 
ation on sucb points as mere fantastic and effeminate 
affectations, wbieb, no doubt, they often are as regards 
tbe sincerity of tbose wbo profess tbem. Tbe bigotry 
wbieb it pleased bis fancy to assume, be used like a 
sword against tbe Jew, as tbe official weapon of tbe 
Cbristian, upon tbe same principle tbat a Capulet would 
have drawn upon a Montague, without conceiving it 
any duty of his to rip up the grounds of so ancient a 
quarrel ; it was a feud banded down to him by his 
ancestors, and it was their business to see that originally 
it had been an honest feud. I cannot yet believe tbat 
Lamb, if seriously aware of any family interconnection 
with Jewish blood, would, even in jest, have held that 
one-sided language. More probable it is, that the 
fiery eye recorded not any alliance with Jewish blood, 
but tbat disastrous alliance with insanity which tainted 
his own life, and laid desolate bis sister's. 

On awakening from bis brief slumber, Lamb sat for 
some time in profound silence, and then, with the most 
startling rapidity, sang out — ' Diddle, diddle, dump- 
kins ; ' not looking at me, but as if soliloquizing. For 
five minutes he relapsed into tbe same deep silence ; 
from which again he started up into the same abrupt 
utterance of — 'Diddle, diddle, dumpkins.' I could 
not help laughing aloud at the extreme energy of tbis 
sudden communication, contrasted with tbe deep 
silence that went before and followed. Lamb smil- 
ingly begged to know what I was laughing at, and 
with a look of as much surprise as if it wero I that 



% 



216 CHAELES LA.MB. 

had done sometliing unaccountable, and not himself. 
I told him (as was the truth) that there had suddenly 
occurred to me the possibility of my being in some 
future period or other called on to give an account 
of this very evening before some literary committee. 
The committee might say to me — (supposing the case 
that I outlived him) — ' You dined with Mr. Lamb in 
January, 1822 ; now, can you remember any remark 
or memorable observation which that celebrated man 
made before or after dinner ? ' 

I as respondent. ' Oh yes, I can.' 

Com. ' What was it ? ' 

Resp. ' Diddle, diddle, dumpkins.' 

Com. ' And was this his only observation ? Did 
Mr. Lamb not strengthen this remark by some other 
of the same nature ? ' 

Resp. ' Yes, he did.' 

Com. ' And what was it ? ' 

Resp. ' Diddle, diddle, dumpkins.' 

Com. ' What is your secret opinion of Dumpkins r 
Do you conceive Dumpkins to have been a thing or a 
peison ? ' 

Resp. ' I conceive Dumpkins to have been a person, 
having the rights of a person.' 

Co7n. ' Capable, for instance, of suing and being 
sued ? ' 

Resp. ' Yes, capable of both ; though I have reason 
to think there would have been very little use in suing 
Dumpkins.' 

Com. ' How so ? Are the committee to understand 
that you, the respondent, in your own case, have found 
it a vain speculation, countenanced only by visionary 
^lawyers, to sue Dumpkins ? ' 



CHARLES LAMB. 217 

Rcsp. ' No ; I never lost a shilling by Dumpkins, 
the reason for which may be that Dvimpkinb never 
owed me a shilling ; but from his pranomen of " did- 
dle," I apprehend that he was too well acquainted 
with joint-stock companies ! ' 

Com. ' And your opinion, is, that he may have did- 
dled Mr. Lamb ? ' 

Resp. ' I conceive it to be not unlikely.' 

Com. ' And, perhaps, from Mr. Lamb's pathetic re- 
iteration of his name, "Diddle, diddle," you would be 
disposed to infer that Dumpkins had practised his did- 
dling talents upon Mr. L. more than once ? ' 

Resj). ' I think it probable.' 

Lamb laughed and brightened up ; tea was an- 
nounced ; Miss Lamb returned. The cloud had passed 
away from Lamb's spirits, and again he realized the 
pleasure of evening, which, in his apprehension, was 
so essential to the pleasure of literature. 

On the table lay a copy of Wordsworth, in two 
volumes : it was the edition of Longman, printed about 
the time of Waterloo. Wordsworth was held in little 
consideration, I believe, amongst the house of Long- 
man ; at any rate, their editions of his works were got 
up in the most slovenly manner. In particular, the 
table of contents was drawn up like a short-hand bill 
of parcels. By accident the book lay open at a part 
of this table, where the sonnet beginning — 

' Alas ! what boots the long laborious quest ' — 

had been entered with mercantile speed, as — 

* Alas what boots,' 

' Yes,' said Lamb, reading this entry in a dolorous 
tone of voice, 'he may well say thai. I paid Hoby 
19 



218 CHARLES LAMB. 

three guineas for a pair that tore like blotting-paper, 
when I was leaping a ditch to escape a farmer that 
pursued me with a pitch-fork for trespassing. But 
why should W. Avear boots in Westmoreland ? Pray, 
advise him to patronize shoes.' 

The mercurialities of Lamb were infinite, and always 
uttered in a spirit of absolute recklessness for the 
({uality or the prosperity of the sally. It seemed to 
liberate his spirits from some burthen of blackest mel- 
ancholy which oppressed it, when he had thrown off a 
jest: he would not stop one instant to improve it; 
nor did he rare the value of a straw whether it were 
good enough to be remembered, or so mediocre as to 
extort high moral indignation from a collector who re- 
fused to receive into his collection of jests and puus 
any that were not felicitously good or revoltingly 
bad. 

After tea. Lamb read to me a number of beautiful 
compositions, which he had himself taken the trouble 
to copy out into a blank paper folio from unsuccessful 
authors. Neglected people in every class won the 
sympathy of Lamb. One of the poems, I remember, 
was a very beautiful sonnet from a volume recently 
published by Lord Thurlow — which, and Lamb's just 
remarks upon it, I could almost repeat verbatim at this 
moment, nearly twenty-seven years later, if your limits 
would allow me. But these, you tell me, allow of no 
such thing ; at the utmost they allow only twelve linos 
more. Now all the world knows that the sonnet itself 
would require fourteen lines ; but take fourteen from 
twelve, and there remains very little, I fear ; besides 
which, I am afraid two of my twelve are already ex- 
hausted. This forces me to interrupt my account of 



CHAKLES LAMB. 219 

Laml/s reading, by reporting tlic very accident that did 
interrupt it in fact ; since tliat no less characteristically 
expressed Lamb's peculiar spirit of kindness, (always 
quickening itself towards the ill-used or tbe down- 
trodden,) than it had previously expressed itself in his 
choice of obscure readings. Two ladies came in, oiv3 
of whom at least had sunk in the scale of worldly con- 
sideration. They were ladies who would not have 
found much recreation in literary discussions ; elderly, 
and habitually depressed. On their account. Lamb 
proposed whist, and in that kind effort to amuse tliejn; 
which naturally drew forth some momentary gayeties 
from himself, but not of a kind to impress themselves 
on the recollection, the evening terminated." 

We have left ourselves no room for a sjiecial exam- 
ination of Lamb's writings, some of which were failures, 
and some were so memorably beautiful as to be uniques 
in their class. The character of Lamb it is, and the 
life-struggle of Lamb, that must fix the attention of 
many, even amongst those wanting in sensibility to his 
intellectual merits. This character and this struggle. 

GO 7 

as we have already observed, impress many traces of 
themselves upon Lamb's writings. Even in that view, 
therefore, they have a ministerial value ; but separately, 
for themselves, they have an indejjendent value of the 
highest order. Upon this point we gladly adopt the 
eloquent words of Sergeant Talfourd : — 

' The sweetness of Lamb's character, breathed through 
his writings, was felt even by strangers ; but its heroic as- 
pect was unguessed even by many of his friends. Let them 
now consider it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice can 
show anything in human action and endurance mor'3 lovely 



220 CHARLES LAMB. 

than its self-devotion exhibits ? It was not merely that he 
saw, through the ensanguined cloud of misfortune which 
had fallen upon his family, the unstained excellence of his 
sister, whose madness had caused it ; that he was ready to 
take her to his own home with reverential afifection, and 
cherish her through life ; and he gave up, for her sake, all 
meaner and more selfish love, and all the hopes which youth 
blends witli the passion which disturbs and ennobles it ; not 
even that he did all this cheerfully, without pluming him- 
self upon his brotherly nobleness as a virtue, or seeking to 
repay himself (as some uneasy martyrs do) by small instal- 
ments of long repining ; but that he carried the spirit of the 
hour in which he first knew and took his course to his last. 
So far from thinking that his sacrifice of youth and love to 
his sister gave him a license to follow his own caprice at the 
expense of her feelings, even in the lightest matters, he al- 
ways wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self, his generous 
benefactress, of whose protecting care he was scarcely 
worthy.' 

It must be remembered, also, which th.e Sergeant 
does not overlook, that Lamb's efforts for the becoming 
support of his sister lasted through a period of forty 
years. Twelve years before his death, the munificence 
of the India House, by granting him a liberal retiring 
allowance, had placed his own support under shelter 
fi'om accidents of any kind. But this died with him- 
self ; and he could not venture to suppose that, in the 
event of his ovvn death, the India House would grant 
to his sister the same allowance as by custom is 
granted to a wife. This they did ; but not venturing 
to calculate upon such nobility of patronage. Lamb 
had applied himself through life to the saving of a 
provision for his sister under any accident to himself. 
And this he did with a persevering prudence, so little 
known in tlie literary class, amongst a continued tenor 



CnARLES LAMB. 221 

of generosities, often so princely as to be scarcely 
known in any class. 

AVas this man, so memorably good by life-long 
sacrifice of himself, in any profound sense a Christian } 
The impression is, that he was not. We, from private 
communications with him, can undertake to say that, 
according to his knowledge and opportunities for the 
study of Christianity, he was. What has injured 
Lamb on this point is, that his early opinions (which, 
however, from the first were united with the deepest 
piety) are read by the inattentive, as if they had been 
the opinions of his mature days ; secondly, that he had 
few religious persons amongst his friends, which made 
him reserved in the expression of his own views ; 
thirdly, that in any case where he altered opinions for 
the better, the credit of the improvement is assigned to 
Coleridge. Lamb, for example, beginning life as a 
Unitarian, in not many years became a Trinitarian. 
Coleridge passed through the same changes in the 
same order ; and here, at least. Lamb is supposed 
simply to have obeyed the influence, confessedly great, 
of Coleridge. This, on our own knowledge of Lamb's 
views, we pronounce to be an error. And the follow- 
ing extracts from Lamb's letters will show, not only 
that he was religiously disposed on impulses self- 
derived, but that, so far from obeying the bias of 
Coleridge, he ventured, on this one subject, firmly as 
regarded the matter, though humbly as regarded the 
manner, affectionately to reprove Coleridge. 

In a letter to Coleridge, written in 1797, the year 
after his first great affliction, he says : 

• Coleridge, T have not one truly elevated character among 
my acquaintance ; not one Christian ; not one but under- 



222 CHAELES LAMB. 

values Christianity. Singly, what am I to do ? "Wesley — 
[have you read his life ?] — was he not an elevated charac- 
ter ? Wesley has said religion was not a solitary thing. 
Alas ! it is necessarily so with me, or next to solitary. 'Tia 
true you write to me ; but correspondence by letter and 
personal intimacy are widely different. Do, do write to 
me ; and do some good to my mind — already how much 
♦' warjjed and relaxed " by the world ! ' 

In a letter written about three months previously, 
he had not scrupled to blame Coleridge at some length 
for audacities of religious speculation, which seemed to 
him at war with the simplicities of pure religion. He 
says : 

' Do continue to write to me. I read your letters with 
my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. 
Especially they please us two when you talk in a religious 
strain. Not but we are offended occasionally with a certain 
freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more 
consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy than consist- 
ent with the humility of genuine piety.' 

Then, after some instances of what he blames, he 
says : 

' Be not angry with me, Coleridge. I wish not to cavil ; 
I know I cannot instruct you ; I only wish to remind you 
of that humility which best becometh the Christian char- 
acter. God, in the New Testament, our best guide, la 
represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, fa- 
miliar light of a parent ; and, in my poor mind, 'tis best 
for us so to consider him as our heavenly Father, and our 
best friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of hia 
character.' 

About a month later, he says : 

' Few but laugh at me for reading my Testament. They 
talk a language I understand not ; I conceal sentiments that 
would be a puzzle to ihem.' 



CHiKLES LAMB. 223 

We see by tliis last quotation where it was that 
Lamb originally sought for consolation. We person- 
ally can vouch that, at a maturer period, when ho was 
approaching his fiftieth year, no change had affected 
his opinions upon that point ; and, on the other hand, 
that no changes had occurred in his needs for consola- 
tion, we see, alas ! in the records of his life. Whither, 
indeed, could he fly for comfort, if not to his Bible? 
And to whom was the Bible an indispensable resource, 
if not to Lamb ? We do not undertake to say, that in 
his knowledge of Christianity he was everywhere pro- 
found or consistent, but he was always earnest in his 
aspirations after its spiritualities, and had an ajiprehen- 
sive sense of its power. 

Charles Lamb is gone ; his life was a continued 
struggle in the service of love the purest, and within 
a sphere visited by little of contemporary applause. 
Even his intellectual displays won but a narrow sym- 
pathy at any time, and in his earlier period were 
saluted with positive derision and contumely on the 
few occasions when they were not oppressed by entire 
neglect. But slowly all things right themselves. All 
merit, which is founded in truth, and is strong enough, 
reaches by sweet exhalations in the end a higher sen- 
sory ; reaches higher organs of discernment, lodged in 
a selecter audience. But the original obtuseness or 
vulgarity of feeling that thwarted Lamb's just estima- 
tion in life, will continue to thwart its popular diffu- 
sion. There are even some that continue to regard 
him with the old hostility. And we, therefore, stand- 
ing by the side of Lamb's grave, seemed to hear, on 
one side, (but in abated tones,) strains of the ancient 
malice — ' This man, that thought himself to be some- 



224 CHAKLES LAMB. 

body, is dead — is buried — is forgotten ! ' and, on the 
other side, seemed to hear ascending, as -with the 
solemnity of an anthem — 'This man, that thought 
himself to be nobody, is dead — is buried; his life 
has been searched; and his memory is hallowed for 



eve 



r I ' 



NOTES. 

Note 1. Page 167. 

* Scriptural,' we call it, because this element of thought, so 
indispensable to a pi'ofound philosophy of morals, is not simply 
viore used in Scripture than elsewhere, but is so exclusively sig- 
nificant or intelligible amidst the correlative ideas of Scripture, 
as to be absolutely insusceptible of translation into classical Greek 
or classical Latin. It is disgraceful that more reflection has not 
been directed to the vast causes and consequences of so pregnant 
a truth. 

Note 2. Page 179. 
' Poor S. T. C' — The affecting expression by -which Coleridge 
indicates himself in the few lines written during his last illness 
for an inscription upon his grave; lines ill constructed in j^oint 
of diction and compression, but otherwise speaking from the 
depths of his heart. 

Note 3. Page 198. 
It is right to remind the reader of this, for a reason applying 
forcibly to the present moment. Michelet has taxed Englishmen 
■with yielding to national animosities in the case of Joan, having 
no plea whatever for that insinuation but the single one drawn 
from Shakspeare's Henry VI. To this the answer is, first, that 
Shakspeare's share in that trilogy is not nicely ascertained. 
Secondly, that M. Michelet forgot (or, which is far worse, not 
forgetting it, he dissembled) the fact, that in undertaking a series 
of dramas upon the basis avowedly of national chronicles, and for 
the very pui-pose of profiting by old traditionary recollections 
connected with ancestral glories, it was mere lunacy to recast th9 

[2253 



226 NOTES. 

circumstances at the bidding of antiquarian research, so as 
entirely to disturb tliese glories. Besides tha*, to Shakspeare'a 
age no such spirit of research had blossomed. Writing for the 
stage, a man would have risked lapidation by uttering a whispjr 
in that direction. And, even if not, what sense could there ha re 
been in openly running counter to the very motive that had 
originally prompted that particular class of chronicle plays ? 
Thirdly, if one Englishman had, in a memorable situation, 
adopted the popular view of Joan's conduct, {'popular as much 
in France as in England;) on the other hand, fifty years before 
M. Michelet was writing this flagrant injustice, another English- 
man (viz., Southey) had, in an epic poem, reversed this mis- 
judgm^^nt, and invested the shepherd girl with a glory no-n here 
else accorded to her, unless indeed by Schiller. Fourthly, ye 
are not entitled to view as an attack upon Joanna, what, in the 
worst construction, is but an unexamining adoption of the con- 
temporary historical accounts. A poet or a dramatist is not 
responsible for the accuracy of chronicles. But what is an at>- 
tack upon Joan, being briefly the foulest and obscenest attempt 
ever made to stifle the grandeur of a great human struggle, viz., 
the French burlesque poem of La Pucelle — what memorable 
man was it that wrote that 1 Was he a Frenchman, or was he 
not ? That M. Michelet should pretend to have forgotten this vilest 
of pasquinades, is more shocking to the general sense of justice 
than any special untruth as to Shakspeare can be to the particu- 
lar nationality of an Englishman. 

Note 4. Page 214. 
The story which furnishes a basis to the fine ballad in Percy's 
Reliques, tind to the Canterbury Tale of Chaucer's Lady Abbess. 



GOETHE. 

John Wolfgang von Goethe, a man of com- 
manding uifluence in the literature of modern Germany 
throughout the latter half of his long life, and possess- 
ing two separate claims upon our notice ; one in right 
of his own unquestionable talents ; and another much 
stronger, though less direct, arising out of his position, 
and the extravagant partisanship put forward on his 
behalf for the last forty j'ears. The literarj^ bodj' in all 
countries, and for reasons which rest upon a sounder 
basis than that of private jealousies, have always been 
disposed to a republican simplicity in all that regards 
the assumption of rank and personal pretensions. 
Valeat quantum valere potest, is the form of license to 
every man's ambition, coupled with its caution. Let 
his influence and authority be commensurate with his 
attested value ; and because no man in the present in- 
firmity of human speculation, and the present multi- 
formity of human power can hope for more than a very 
[imited superiority, there is an end at once to all abso- 
lute dictatorship. The dictatorship in any case could 
be only relative, and in relation to a single department 
of art or knowledge ; and this for a reason stronger even 
than that already noticed, viz., the vast extent of the 
field on which the intellect is now summoned to employ 
itself. That objection, as it applies only to the degree 
of the difficulty, might be met by a corresponding de- 

[227J 



228 GOETHE. 

gree of mental energy ; such a thing may be supposed, 
at least. But another difficulty there is of a profounder 
character which cannot be so easily parried. Those 
who have reflected at all upon the fine arts, know that 
power of one kind is often inconsistent, positively in- 
compatible with power of another kind. For example, 
the dramatic mind is incompatible with the epic. And 
though we should consent to suppose that some intel- 
lect might arise endowed upon a scale of such angelic 
comprehensiveness, as to vibrate equally and indiff'er- 
ently towards either pole, still it is next to impossible, 
in the exercise and culture of the two powers, but some 
bias must arise which would give that advantage to the 
one over the other which the right arm has over the 
left. But the supposition, the very case put, is base- 
less, and countenanced by no precedent. Yet, under 
this previous difficulty, and with regard to a literature 
convulsed, if any ever was, by an almost total anarchy, 
it is a fact notorious to all who take an interest in 
Germany and its concerns, that Goethe did in one way 
or other, through the length and breadth of that vast 
country, establish a supremacy of influence wholly 
unexampled ; a supremacy indeed perilous in a less 
honorable man, to those whom he might chance to 
hate, and with regard to himself thus far unfortunate, 
that it conferred upon every work proceeding from his 
pen a sort of papal indulgence, an immunity from 
criticism, or even from the appeals of good sense, such 
as it is not wholesome that any man should enjoy. Yet 
we repeat that German literature was and is in a condi- 
tion of total anarchy. With this solitary exception, no 
name, even in the most narrow section of knowledge 
or of power, has ever been able in that country to 



GOETHE. 229 

cnallenge unconditional reverence; whereas, with us 
and in France, name the science, name the art, and 
we will name the dominant professor ; a difference 
which partly arises out of the fact that England and 
France are governed in their opinions by two or three 
capital cities, whilst Germany looks for its leadership 
to as many cities as there are rcsidenzen and universi- 
ties. For instance, the little territory with which 
Goethe was connected presented no less than two such 
public lights ; Wiemar, the rcsidenz or privileged 
abode of the Grand Duke, and Jena, the university 
founded by that house. Partly, however, tbis differ- 
ence may be due to the greater restlessness, and to the 
greater energy as respects mere speculation, of the 
German mind. But no matter whence arising, or how 
interpreted, the fact is what we have described ; abso- 
lute confusion, the ' anarch old ' of Milton, is the one 
deity whose sceptre is there paramount ; and yet there 
it was, in that very realm of chaos, that Goethe built 
his throne. That he must have looked with trepida- 
tion and perplexity upon his wild empire and its ' dark 
foundations,' may be supposed. The tenure was un- 
certain to him as regarded its duration ; to us it is 
equally uncertain, and in fact mysterious, as regards its 
origin. INIeantime the mere fact, contrasted with the 
general tendencies of the German literary world, is 
sufficient to justify a notice, somewhat cirgumstantial, 
of the man in whose favor, whether naturally by force 
of genius, or by accident concurring with intrigue, so 
unexampled a result was effected. 

Goethe was born at noonday on the 28th of jVugust, 
1749, in his father's house at Frankfort-on-the-Maine. 
The circumstances of his birth were thus far remark- 



230 GOETHl!:, 

able, that, unless Goethe's vanity deceived him, they 
led to a happy revolution hitherto retarded by female 
delicacy falsely directed. From some error of the 
midwife who attended his mother, the infant Goethe 
appeared to be still-born. Sons there were as yet none 
from this marriage ; everybody was therefore interested 
in the child's life ; and the panic which arose in con- 
sequence, having survived its immediate occasion, was 
improved into a public resolution, (for which no doubt 
society stood ready at that moment,) to found some 
course of public instruction from this time forward for 
those who undertook professionally the critical duties 
of accoucheur. 

We have noticed the house in which Goethe was 
born, as well as the city. Both were remarkable, and 
fitted to leave lasting impressions upon a young per- 
son of sensibility. As to the city, its antiquity is not 
merely venerable, but almost mysterious ; towers were 
at that time to be found in the mouldering lines of its 
earliest defences, which belonged to the age of Charle- 
magne, or one still earlier ; battlements adapted to a 
mode of warfare anterior even to that of feudalism or 
romance. The customs, usages, and local privileges 
of Frankfort, and the rural districts adjacent, were of 
a. corresponding character. Festivals were annually 
celebrated at a short distance from the walls, which 
had descended from a dateless antiquity. Everything 
which met the eye spoke the language of elder ages ; 
whilst the river on which the place was seated, its great 
fair, which still held the rank of the greatest in Chris- 
tendom, and its connection with the throne of C?esar 
and his inauguration, by giving to Frankfort an i?iter- 
est and a public character in the eyes of all Germany, 



231 



had the effect of co intersigning, as it were, by state 
authority, the importance which she otherwise chal- 
lenged to her ancestral distinctions. Fit house for 
such a city, and in due keeping with the general 
scenery, was that of Goethe's father. It had in fact 
been composed out of two contiguous houses ; that ac- 
cident had made it spacious and rambling in its plan ; 
whilst a further irregularity had grown out of the 
original difference in point of level between the corres- 
ponding stories of the two houses, making it necessary 
to connect the rooms of the same suite by short flights 
of steps. Some of these features were no doubt re- 
moved by the recast of the house under the name of 
' repairs,' (to evade a city by-law,) afterwards executed 
by his father ; but such was the house of Goethe's 
infancy, and in all other circumstances of style and 
furnishing equally antique. 

The spirit of society in Frankfort, without a court, a 
university, or a learned body of any extent, or a resi- 
dent nobility in its neighborhood, could not be expected 
to display any very high standard of polish. Yet, on 
the other hand, as an independent city, governed by its 
own separate laws and tribunals, (that privilege of 
autonomy so dearly valued by ancient Greece,) and 
possessing besides a resident corps of jurisprudents and 
of .agents in various ranks for managing the interests 
of the German emperor and other princes, Frc}.nkft)rt 
had the means within herself of giving a liberal tone 
to the pursuits of her superior citizens, and of co- 
operating in no inconsiderable degree with the general 
movement of the times, political or intellectual. The 
memoirs of Goethe himself, and in particular the pic- 
ture there given of his own family, as well as other 



2.32 GOETHE. 

contemporary glimpses of German domestic society in 
those clays, are sufficient to show that much knowledge, 
much true cultivation of mind, much sound refinement 
of taste, were then distributed through the middle 
classes of German society ; meaning by that very in- 
detenninate expression those classes which for Frank- 
fort composed the aristocracy, viz., all who had daily 
leisure, and regular funds for employing it to advan- 
tage. It is not necessary to add, because that is a fact 
applicable to all stages of society, that Frankfort pre- 
sented many and various specimens of original talent, 
moving upon all directions of human speculation. 

Yet, with this general allowance made for the capa- 
cities of the place, it is too evident that, for the most 
part, they lay inert and undeveloped. In many respects 
Frankfort resembled an English cathedral city, accord- 
ing to the standard of such places seventy years ago, 
not, that is to say, like Carlisle in this day, where a 
considerable manufacture exists, but like Chester as it 
is yet. The chapter of a cathedral, the resident eccle- 
siastics attached to the duties of so large an establish- 
ment, men always well educated, and generally having 
families, compose the original nucleus, around which 
soon gathers all that part of the local gentry who, for 
any purpose, whether of education for their children, 
or of social enjoyment for themselves, seek the advan- 
tages of a town. Hither resort all the timid old ladies 
who wish for conversation, or other forms of social 
amusement ; hither resort the valetudinarians, male or 
female, by way of commanding superior medical advice 
at a cost not absolutely ruinous to themselves ; and 
multitudes besides, with narrow incomes, to whom 
Ihese quiet retreats are so many cities of refuge. 



GOETHE. 233 

Sucli, In one view, they really are ; and yet in an- 
other tlicy have a vicious constitution. Cathedral cities 
in England, imperial cities without manufactures in 
Germany, are all in an improgressive condition. The 
amount of superior families oscillates rather than 
changes ; that is, it fluctuates within fixed limits ; and, 
for all inferior families, being composed either of shop- 
keepers or of menial servants, they are determined by 
the number, or, which, on a large average, is the same, 
by the pecuniary power, of their employers. Hence 
it arises, that room is made for one man, in whatever 
line of dependence, only by the death of another ; and 
the constant increments of the population are carried 
off into other cities. Not less is the difference of 
such cities as i^egards the standard of manners. How 
striking is the soft and urbane tone of the lower orders 
in a cathedral city, or in a watering-place dependent 
upon ladies, contrasted with the bold, often insolent 
demeanor of a self-dependent artisan or mutinous 
mechanic of Manchester and Glasgow. 

Children, however, are interested in the state of 
society around them, chiefly as it aff"ects their parents. 
Those of Goethe were respectable, and perhaps tolera- 
bly representative of the general condition in their o\vn 
rank. An English authoress of great talent, in her 
Characteristics of Goethe, has too much countenanced 
the notion that he owed his intellectual advantages 
exclusively to his mother. Of this there is no proof. 
His mother wins more esteem from the reader of this 
day, because she was a cheerful woman of serene 
temper, brought into advantageous comparison with a 
husband much older than herself, whom circumstances 
had rendered moody, fitful, sometimes capricious, and 
20 



234 GOETHE. 

confessedly obstinate in that degree wliicli Pope has 
taught as to think connected with inveterate error : 

'Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong,' 

unhappily presents an association too often actually 
occurring in nature, to leave much chance for error in 
presuming either quality from the other. And, in fact, 
Goethe's father was so uniformly obstinate in pressing 
his own views upon all who belonged to him, whenever 
he did come forward in an attitude of activity, that his 
family had much reason to be thankful for the rarity of 
such displays. Fortunately for them, his indolence 
neutralized his obstinacy. And the worst shape in 
which his troublesome temper showed itself, was in 
what concerned the religious reading of the family. 
Once begun, the worst book as well as the best, the 
longest no less than the shortest, was to be steadfastly 
read through to the last word of the last volume ; no 
excess of yawning availed to obtain a reprieve, not, 
adds his son, though he were himself the leader of the 
yawners. As an illustration he mentions Bowyer's 
History of the Popes ; which awful series of records, 
the catacombs, as it were, in the palace of history, 
were actually traversed from one end to the other of 
the endless suite by the unfortunate house of Goethe. 
Allowing, however, for the father's unamiableness in 
this one point, upon all intellectual ground both parents 
seem to have met very much upon a level. Two illus- 
trations may suffice, one of which occurred during the 
infancy of Goethe. The science of education was at that 
time making its first rude motions towards an ampler 
development ; and, anwngst other reforms then floating 
In the general mind, was one for eradicating the child- 



GOETHE. 235 

ish fear of ghosts, &c. The young Goethes, as it hap- 
pened, slept not in separate beds only, but in separate 
rooms ; and not unfrequcntly the poor children, under 
the stinging terrors of their lonely situation, s.tole away 
from their 'forms,' to speak in the hunter's phrase, and 
sought to rejoin each other. But in these attempts they 
were liable to surprises from the enemy ; papa and 
mamma were both on the alert, and often intercepted 
the young deserter by a cross march or an ambuscade ; 
in which cases each had a separate policy for enforcing 
obedience. The father, upon his general system of 
' perseverance,' compelled the fugitive back to his 
quarters, and, in effect, exhorted him to persist in being 
frightened out of his wits. To his wife's gentle heart 
that course appeared cruel, and she reclaimed the de- 
linquent by bribes ; the peaches which her garden 
walls produced being the fund from which she chiefly 
drew her supplies for this branch of the secret service. 
What were her winter bribes, when the long nights 
would seem to lie heaviest on the exchequer, is not 
said. Speaking seriously, no man of sense can sup- 
pose that a course of suffering from terrors the most 
awful, under whatever influence supported, whether 
under the naked force of compulsion, or of that con- 
nected with bribes, could have any final effect in miti- 
gating the passion of awe, connected, by our very 
dreams, with the shadowy and the invisible, or in 
tranquillizing the infantine imagination. 

A second illustration involves a great moral event in 
the history of Goethe, as it was, in fact, the first occa- 
sion of his receiving impressions at war with his re- 
ligious creed. Piety is so beautiful an ornament of 
the youthful mind, doubt or distrust so unnatuial a 



236 GOETHE. 

growtli from confiding innocence, that an infant free- 
thinker is heard of not so much with disgust as with 
perplexity. A sense of the ludicrous is apt to inter- 
mingle ; and we lose out natural horror of the result 
in wonder at its origin. Yet in this instance there is 
no room for doubt ; the fact and the occasion are both 
on record ; there can be no question about the date ; 
and, finally, the accuser is no other than the accused. 
Goethe's own pen it is which proclaims, that already, 
in the early part of his seventh year, his reliance upon 
God as a moral governor had sufi'ered a violent shock, 
was shaken, if not undermined. On the 1st of No- 
vember, 1755, occurred the great earthquake at Lis- 
bon. Upon a double account, this event occvipied the 
thoughts of all Europe for an unusual term of time ; 
both as an expression upon a larger scale than usual 
of the mysterious physical agency concerned in earth- 
quakes, and also for the awful human tragedy* which 
attended either the earthquake itself, or its immediate 
sequel in the sudden irruption of the Tagus. Sixty 
thousand persons, victims to the dark power in its first 
or its second avatar, attested the Titanic scale upon 
which it worked. Here it was that the shallow piety 
of the Germans found a stumbling-block. Those who 
have read any circumstantial history of the physical 

* Of this no picture can ever hope to rival that hasty one 
sketched in the letter of the chaplain to the Lisbon factory. The 
plague of Athens as painted by Thucydides or Lucretius, nay 
even the fabulous plague of London by De Foe, contain no 
Bcenes or situations equal in effect to some in this plain historic 
statement. Nay, it would perhaps be difficult to produce a pas- 
sage from Ezekiel, from ^schylus, or from Shakspeare, which 
would so profoundly startle the sense of sublimity as one or two 
of his incidents. 



GOETHE. 237 

signs wliicli preceded this earthquake, are aware that 
in England and Northern Germany many singular 
phenomena were observed, more or less manifestly 
connected with the same dark agency which terminated 
aj; Lisbon, and running before this final catastrophe at 
times so accurately varying with the distances, as to 
furnish something like a scale for measuring the 
velocity with which it moved. These German phe 
nomena, circulated rapidly over all Germany by the 
journals of every class, had seemed to give to the 
Germans a nearer and more domestic interest in the 
great event, than belonged to them merely in their 
universal character of humanity. It is also well known 
to observers of national characteristics, that amongst 
the Germans the household charities, the pieties of the. 
hearth, as they may be called, exist, if not really in 
greater strength, yet with much less of the usual 
balances or restraints. A German father, for example, 
is like the grandfather of other nations ; and thus a 
piety, which in its own nature scarcely seems liable to 
excess, takes, in its external aspect, too often an air of 
effeminate imbecility. These two considerations are 
necessary to explain the intensity with which this 
Lisbon tragedy laid hold of the German mind, and 
chiefly under the one single aspect of its undistinguish- 
ing fury. Women, children, old men — these, doubt- 
less, had been largely involved in the perishing sixty 
thousand ; and that reflection, it would seem from 
Goethe's account, had so far embittered the sympathy 
of the Germans with their distant Portuguese brethren, 
that, in the Frankfort discussions, sullen murmurs had 
gradually ripened into bold impeachments of Provi- 
dence. There can be no gloomier form of infidelity 



238 GOETHE. 

than that wliicli questions the moral attributes of the 
Great Being, in whose hands are the final destinies of 
us all. Such, however, was the form of Goethe's 
earliest scepticism, such its origin ; caught up from the 
very echoes which rang through the streets of Frank- 
fort when the subject occupied all men's minds. And 
such, for anything that appears, continued to be its 
form thenceforwards to the close of his life, if specula- 
tions so crude could be said to have any form at all. 
Many are the analogies, some close ones, between 
England and Germany with regard to the circle of 
changes they have run through, political or social, for 
a century back. The challenges are frequent to a 
comparison ; and sometimes the result would be to the 
advantage of Germany, more often to ours. But in 
religious philosophy, which in reality is the true popu- 
lar philosophy, how vast is the superiority on the side 
of this country. Not a shopkeeper or mechanic, we 
may venture to say, but would have felt this obvious 
truth, that surely the Lisbon earthquake yielded no 
fresh lesson, no peculiar moral, beyond what belonged 
to every man's experience in every age. A passage in 
the New Testament about the fall of the tower of 
Siloam, and the just construction of that event, had 
already anticipated the difficulty, if such it could be 
thought. Not to mention, that calamities upon the 
same scale in the earliest age of Christianity, the fall 
of the amphitheatre at Fidenae, or the destruction of 
Pompeii, had presented the same problem as the Lis- 
bon earthquake. Nay, it is presented daily in the 
humblest individual case, where wrong is triumphant 
over right, or innocence confounded with guilt in one 
common disaster. And that the parents of Goethe 



GOETHE. 239 

flhould have authorized his error, if only by their 
silence, argues a degree of ignorance in them, which 
could not have co-existed with much superior know".- 
edge in the public mind. 

Goethe, in his Memoirs, (Book vi.,) commends his 
father for the zeal with which he superintended the 
education of his children. But apparently it was a 
zeal without knowledge. Many things were taught 
imperfectly, but all casually, and as chance suggested 
them. Italian was studied a little, because the elder 
Goethe had made an Italian tour, and had collected 
some Italian books, and engravings by Italian masters. 
Hebrew was studied a little, because Goethe the son 
had a fancy for it, partly with a view to theology, and 
partly because there was a Jewish quarter, gloomy and 
sequestrated, in the city of Frankfort. French offered 
itself no doubt on many suggestions, but originally on 
occasion of a French theatre, supported by the staff of 
the French army when quartered in the same city. 
Latin was gathered in a random way from a daily 
sense of its necessity. English upon the temptation 
of a stranger's advertisement, promising upon moder- 
ate terms to teach that language in four weeks ; a 
proof, by the way, that the system of bold innovations 
in the art of tuition had already commenced. Riding 
and fencing were also attempted under masters appa- 
rently not very highly qualified, and in the same 
desultory style of application. Dancing was taught 
to his family, strange as it may seem, by Mr. Goethe 
himself. There is good reason to believe that not one 
of all these accomplishments was possessed by Goethe, 
when ready to visit the university, in a degree which 
made it practically of any use to him. Drawing and 



240 GOETHE. 

music were pursued confessedly as amusements ; and it 
would be difficult to mention any attainment whatso- 
ever which. Goethe had carried to a point of excellence 
in the years which he spent under his father's care, 
unless it were his mastery over the common artifices 
of metre and the common topics of rhetoric, which fit- 
ted him for writing what are called occasional poems 
and impromptus. This talent he possessed in a re- 
markable degree, and at an early age ; but he owed its 
cultivation entirely to himself. 

In a city so orderly as Frankfort, and in a station 
privileged from all the common hardships of poverty, 
it can hardly be expected that many incidents should 
arise, of much separate importance in themselves, to 
break the monotony of life ; and the mind of Goethe 
was not contem])lative enough to create a value for 
common occurrences through any peculiar impressiofis 
which he had derived from them. In the years 1763 
and 1764, when he must have been from fourteen to 
fifteen years old, Goethe witnessed the inauguration 
and coronation of a king of the Romans, a solemn 
spectacle connected by prescription with the city of 
.Frankfort. He describes it circumstantially, but with 
very little feeling, in his Memoirs. Probably the pre- 
vailing sentiment, on looking back at least to this 
transitory splendor of dress, processions, and ceremo- 
nial forms, was one of cynical contempt. But this ha 
could not express, as a person closely connected with 
a German court, and without giving much and various 
off'ence. It is with some timidity even that he hazards 
a criticism upon single parts of the costume adopted 
by s-sme of the actors in that gorgeous scene. White 
silk stockings, and pumps of the common form, he 



GOETHE. 24l 

objects to as out of harmony witli the antique and 
heraldic aspects of the general costume, and ventures 
to suggest either boots or sandals as an improvement. 
Had Goethe felt himself at liberty from all restraints 
of private consideration in composing these memoirs, 
can it be doubted that he would have taken his retro- 
spect of this Frankfort inauguration from a different 
station ; from the station of that stern revolution 
which, within his own time and partly under his own 
eyes, had shattered the whole imperial system of 
thrones, in whose equipage this gay pageant made so 
principal a figure, had humbled Caesar himself to the 
dust, and left him an emperor without an empire ? 
We at least, for our parts, could not read without 
some emotion one little incident of these gorgeous 
scenes recorded by Goethe, namely, that when the 
emperor, on rejoining his wife for a few moments, 
held up to her notice his own hands and arms arrayed 
in the antique habiliments of Charlemagne, Maria 
^Theresa — she whose children were summoned to so 
sad a share in the coming changes — gave way to 
sudden bursts of loud laughter, audible to the whole 
populace below her. That laugh, on surveying the 
departing pomps of Charlemagne, must, in any con- 
templative ear, have rimg with a sound of deep sig- 
nificance, and with something of the same effect 
which belongs to a figure of death introduced by a 
painter, as mixing in the festal dances of a bridal as- 
sembly. 

These pageants of 1763-64 occupy a considerable 
space in Goethe's Memoirs, and with some logical 
propriety at least, in consideration of their being ex- 
clusively attached to Frankfort, and connected by 
21 



242 GOETHE. 

manifold links of person and office with, tiie privileged 
character of the city. Perhaps he might feel a sort 
of narrow local patriotism in recalling these scent. s to 
public notice by description, at a time when they had 
been irretrievably extinguished as realities. But, 
after making every allowance for their local value to 
a Frankfort family, and for their memorable splendor, 
we may venture to suppose that by far the most im- 
pressive remembrances which had gathered about the 
boyhood of Goethe, were those which pointed to 
Frederick of Prussia. This singular man, so imbecile 
as a pretender to philosophy and new lights, so truly 
heroic under misfortunes, was the first German who 
created a German interest, and gave a transient unity 
to the German name, iinder all its multijjlied divisions. 
Were it only for this conquest of diificulties so pecu- 
liar, he would deserve his German designation of Fred, 
the Unique [Fritz der einzige). He had been par- 
tially tried and known previously ; but it was the 
Seven Years' War which made him the popular idol.. 
This began in 1756; and to Frankfort, in a very 
peculiar way, that war brought dissensions and heart- 
burnings in its train. The imperial connections of 
the city with many public and private interests, 
pledged it to the anti-Prussian cause. It happened 
also that the truly German character of the reigning 
imperial family, the domestic habits of the empress 
and her young daughters, and other circumstances, 
were of a nature to endear the ties of policy ; self- 
interest and affection pointed in the same direction. 
And yet were all these considerations allowed to melt 
away before the brilliant qualities of one man, and the 
romantic enthusiasm kindled by his victories. Frank- 



GOETHE. 243 

fort was divided within herself; the j'Oiing and the 
generous were all dedicated to Frederick, A smaller 
party, more cautious and prudent, were, for the im- 
perialists. Families were divided upon this question 
against families, and often against themselves ; feuds, 
begun in private, issued often into public violence ; 
and, according to Goethe's own illustration, the streets 
Avere vexed by daily brawls as hot and as personal as 
of old between the Capulets and Montagues. 

These dissensions, however, were pursued with not 
much personal risk to any of the Goethes, until a 
French army passed the Rhine as allies of the imperi- 
alists. One corps of this force took up their quarters 
in Frankfort ; and the Compte Thorane, who held a 
high appointment on the staff, settled himself for a 
long period of time in the spacious mansion of Goethe's 
father. This officer, whom his place made responsible 
for the discipline of the army in relation to the citi- 
zens, was naturally by temper disposed to moderation 
and forbearance. He was indeed a favorable specimen 
of French military officers under the old system ; well 
bred, not arrogant, well informed, and a friend of the 
fine arts. For painting, in particular, he professed 
great regard and some knowledge. The Goethes were 
able to forward his views amongst German artists ; 
whilst, on the other hand, they were pleased to have 
thus an opportunity of directing his patronage towards 
some of their own needy connections. In this ex- 
change of good offices, the two parties were for some 
time able to maintain a fair appearance of reciprocal 
good-will. This on the comte's side, if not particu- 
larly warm, was probably sincere ; but in Goethe 
the father it was a masque for inveterate dislike. A 



244 GOETHE. 

natural ground of this existed in the original relations 
between tliein. Under whatever disguise or pretext, 
the Frenchman was in fact a military intruder. He 
occupied the best suite of rooms in the house, used 
the furniture as his own ; and, though upon private 
motives he abstained from doing all the injury which 
his situation authorized, (so as in particular to have 
spread his fine military maps upon the floor, rathej 
than disfigure the decorated walls by nails,) still he 
claimed credit, if not services of requital, for all such 
instances of forbearance. Here were grievances enough ; 
but, in addition to those, the comte's official appoint- 
ments drew upon him a weight of daily business which 
kept the house in a continual uproar. Farewell to the 
quiet of a literary amateur, and the orderliness of a 
German household. Finally, the comte was a French- 
man. These were too many assaults upon one man's 
patience. It will be readily understood, therefore, 
how it happened, that, whilst Goethe's gentle minded 
mother, with her fiock of children, continued to be on 
the best terms with Comte Thorane, the master of the 
house kept moodily aloof, and retreated from all inter- 
course. 

Goethe, in his own Memoir, enters into large details 
upon this subject ; and from him we shall borrow the 
denouement of the tale. A crisis had for some time 
been lowering over the French affairs in Frankfort ; 
things seemed ripening for a battle ; and at last it 
came. Flight, siege, bombardment, possibly a storm, 
all danced before the eyes of the terrified citizens. 
Fortunately, however, the battle took place at the dis- 
tance of four or five miles from Frankfort. Monsieur 
le Comte was absent, of course, on the field of battle. 



GOETHE. 24S 

His unwilling host thougTit that on such an occasion 
he also might go out in quality of spectator ; and Avith 
this purpose he connected another, worthy of a Parson 
Adams. It is his son who tells the story, whose filial 
duty was not proof against his sense of the ludicrous. 
The old gentleman's hatred of the French had hy this 
time brought him over to his son's admiration of the 
Prussian hero. Not doubting for an instant that vic- 
tory would follow that standard, he resolved on this 
day to oflfer in person his congratulations to the Prus- 
sian army, whom he already viewed as his liberator 
from a domestic nuisance. So purposing, he made his 
way cautiously to the suburbs ; from the suburbs, still 
listening at each advance, he went forward to the coun- 
try ; totally forgetting, as his son insists, that, however 
completely beaten, the French army must still occupy 
some situation or other between himself and his Ger- 
man deliverer. Coming, however, at length to a heath, 
he found some of those marauders usually to be met 
with in the rear of armies, prowling about, and at 
intervals amusing themselves with shooting at a mark. 
For want of a better, it seemed not improbable that a 
large German head might answer their purpose. Cer- 
tain signs admonished him of this, and the old gentle- 
man crept back to Ffankfort. Not many hours after 
came back also the comte, by no means creeping, how- 
ever ; on the contrary, crowing with all his might for 
u victory which he averred himself to have won. There 
had in fact been an affair, but on no very great scale, 
and with no distinguishing results. Some prisoners, 
however, 'he brought, together with some wounded; 
and naturally he expected all well disposed persons to 
make their compliments of congratulations upon this 



246 GOETHE. 

triumpli. Of this duty poor Mrs. Goetlie and h.ei 
children cheerfully acquitted themselves that same 
night ; { nd Monsieur le Comte was so well pleased 
with the sound opinions of the little Goethes, that he 
sent them in return a collection of sweetmeats and 
fruits. All promised to go well ; intentions, after all, 
are not acts ; and there certainly is not, nor ever was, 
any treason in taking a morning's Avalk. But, as ill 
luck would have it, just as Mr. Goethe was passing the 
comte' s door, out came the comte in person, purely by 
accident, as we are told ; but we suspect that the surly 
old German, either under his morning hopes or his 
evening disappointments, had talked with more frank- 
ness than prudence. ' Good evening to you, Herr 
Goethe,' said the comte ; ' you are come, I see, to pay 
your tribute of congratulation. Somewhat of the latest, 
to be sure ; but no matter.' ' By no means,' replied 
the German : ' by no means ; mit nichten. Heartily I 
wished, the whole day long, that you and your cursed 
gang might all go to the devil together.' Here was 
plain speaking, at least. The Comte Thorane could 
no longer complain of dissimulation. His first move- 
ment was to order an arrest ; and the official inter- 
preter of the French army took to himself the whole 
credit that he did not carry it into effect. Goethe 
takes the trouble to report a dialogue, of length and 
dulness absolutely incredible, between this interpreter 
and the comte. No such dialogue, we may be assured, 
ever took place. Goethe may, however, be right in 
supposing that, amongst a foreign soldiery, irritated 
by the pointed contrasts between the Frankfort treat- 
ment of their own wounded, and of their prisoners, 
»vho happened to be ir the same circumstances, and 



GOETHE. 247 

under a military council not held to any rigorous re- 
sponsibility, his father might have found no Aery 
favorable consideration of his case. It is well, there- 
fore, that aftei some struggle the comte's better nature 
triumphed. He suffered Mrs. Goethe's merits to out- 
weigh her husband's delinquency ; countermanded the 
order for arrest, and, during the remainder of their 
connection, kept at such a distance from his moody host 
as was equally desirable for both. Fortunately that 
remainder was not very long. Comte Thorane was 
soon displaced ; and the whole army was soon after 
wards withdrawn from Frankfort. 

In his fifteenth year Goethe was entangled in some 
connection with young people of inferior rank, amongst 
whom was Margaret, a young girl about two years 
older than himself, and the object of his first love 
The whole aff'air, as told by Goethe, is somewhat mys- 
terious. What might be the final views of the elder 
parties it is difficult to say ; but Goethe assures us that 
they used his services only in writing an occasional 
epithalamium, the pecuniary acknowledgment for which 
was spent jovially in a general banquet. The magis- 
trates, however, interfered, and endeavored to extort a 
confession from Goethe. He, as the son of a respect- 
able family, was to be pardoned ; the others to be 
punished. No confession, however, covild be extorted; 
and for his own part he declares that, beyond the 
offence of forming a clandestine connection, he had 
nothing to confess. The affair terminated, as regarded 
himself, in a severe illness. Of the others we heat 
no more. 

The next event of importance in Goethe's life was 
his removal to college. His own wishes pointed to 



248 GOETHE. 

Gottingen, but his father preferred Leipsic. Thithei 
accordingly he went, but he carried his obedience no 
farther. Declining the study of jurisprudence, he 
attached himself to general literature. Subsequently 
he removed to the university of Strasburg ; but in 
neither place could it be said that he pursued any 
regular course of study. His health suffered at times 
during this period of his life ; at first, from an affection 
of the chest, caused by an accident on his first journey 
to Leipsic ; the carriage had stuck fast in the muddy 
roads, and Goethe exerted himself too much in as- 
sisting to extricate the wheels. A second illness con- 
nected with the digestive organs brought him into 
considerable danger. 

After his return to Frankfort, Goethe commenced 
his career as an author. In 1773, and the following 
year, he made his maiden essay in Goetz of Bcrlicli- 
ingen, a drama, (the translation of which, remarkably 
enough, was destined to be the literary coup d'essai 
of Sir Walter Scott,) and in the far-famed Wcrther. 
The first of these was pirated ; and in consequence the 
author found some difficulty in paying for the paper of 
the genuine edition, which part of the expense, by his 
contract with the publisher, fell upon himself. The 
general and early popularity of the second v/ork is well 
known. Yet, except in so far as it might spread his 
name abroad, it cannot be supposed to have had much 
influence in attracting that potent patronage which now 
began to determine the course of his future life. So 
much we collect from the account which Goethe him- 
self has left us of this aff"air in its earliest stages. 

' I vv'as sitting alone in my room,' savs he, ' at my 
father's house in Frankfort, when a gentleman entered, 



OOEIHE. 249 

whom at first I took for Frederick Jacobi, but soon 
discovered by the dubious light to be a stranger. He 
had a military air ; and announcing himself by the 
name of Von Knebel, gave me to understand in a short 
explanation, that being in the Prussian service, he had 
connected himself, during a long residence at Berlin 
and Potsdam, with the literati of those places ; but that 
at present he held the appointment from the court of 
Weimar of travelling tutor to the Prince Constantino. 
This I heard with pleasure ; for many of our friends 
had brought us the most interesting accounts from 
W "simar, in particular that the Duchess Amelia, mother 
of the young grand duke and his brother, summoned 
to her assistance in educating her sons the most dis- 
tinguished men in Germany ; and that the university 
of Jena cooperated powerfully in all her liberal plans. 
I ivas aware also that Wielaud was in high favor ; and 
that the German jNIcrcury (a literary journal of emi- 
nence) was itself highly creditable to the city of Jena, 
from which it issued. A beautiful and well-conducted 
theatre had besides, as I knew, been lately established 
at Weimar. This, it was true, had been destroyed ; 
but that event, under common circumstances so likely 
to be fatal as respected the present, had served only to 
call forth the general expression of confidence in the 
young prince as a restorer and upholder of all great 
interests, and true to his purposes under any calamity.' 
Thinking thus, and thus prepossessed in favor of Wei- 
mar, it was natural that Goethe should be eager to see 
the prince. Nothing was easier. It happened that he 
and his brother Constantino were at this moment in 
Frankfort, and Von Knebel willingly offered to present 
Goethe. No sooner said than done ; they repaired to 



250 GOETHE. 

the hotel, where they found the illustrious travellers, 
with Count Goertz, the tutor of the elder. 

Upon this occasion an accident, rather than any 
previous rej)utation of Goethe, was probably the deter-- 
mining occasion which led to his favor with the future 
sovereign of Weimar. A new book lay upon the table ; 
that none of the strangers had read it, Goethe inferred 
fi-om observing that the leaves were as yet uncut. It 
was a work of Moser, (Patriotische Phantasien ;) and, 
being political rather than literary in its topics, it pre- 
sented to Goethe, previously acquainted with its outline, 
an opportunity for conversing with the prince upon 
subjects nearest to his heart, and of showing that he 
was not himself a mere studious recluse. The oppor- 
tunity was not lost ; the prince and his tutor were much 
interested, and perhaps a little sur^jrised. Such sub- 
jects have the further advantage, according to Goethe's 
own illustration, that, like the Arabian thousand and 
one nights, as conducted by Sultana Scheherezade, 
'never ending, still beginning,' they rarely come to 
any absolute close, but so interweave one into another, 
as still to leave behind a large arrear of interest. In 
order to pursue the conversation, Goethe was invited to 
meet them soon after at Mentz. He kept the appoint- 
ment punctually ; made himself even more agreeable ; 
and finally received a formal invitation to enter the ser- 
vice of this excellent prince, who was now beginning 
to collect around him all those persons who have since 
made Weimar so distinguished a name in connection 
with the German literature. With some opposition 
from his father, who held wp the rupture between Vol- 
taire and Frederick of Prussia as a precedent applying 
to all possible connections of princes and literati, 



GOETHE. 251 

Goethe accepted the invitation ; and hcnceforwards, 
for upwards of fifty-five years, his fortunes were bound 
up with the ducal house of Weimar. 

The noble part which that house played in the great 
modern drama of German politics is well known, and 
would have been better known had its power been 
greater. But the moral value of its sacrifices and its 
risk is not the less. Had greater potentates shown 
equal firmness, Germany would not have been laid at 
the feet of Napoleon. In 1806, the Grand Duke was 
aware of the peril which awaited the allies of Prussia ; 
but neither his heart nor his conscience would allow of 
his dcffDrtlng a friend in whose army he held a principal 
■command. The decisive battle took place in his own 
territory, and not f;ir from his own palace and city of 
Weimar. Personally he was with the Prussian army; 
Vit his excellent consort stayed in the palace to encour- 
^ge her subjects, and as far as possible to conciliate the 
onemy by her presence. The fortune of that great 
day, the 14th of October, 1806, was decided early; 
md the awful event was announced by a hot retreat 
"nd a murderous pursuit through the streets of the 
town. In the evening Napoleon arrived in person ; and 
now came the trying moment. ' The duchess,' says an 
Englishman well acquainted Avith Weimar and its court, 
' placed herself on the top of the staircase to greet him 
-^dth the formality of a courtly reception. Napoleon 
/Started when he beheld her : Qui ctes vous ? he ex- 
;laimcd with characteristic abruptness. Je suis la 
Duchesne de Weimar. Je vous plains, he retorted 
fiercely, J'ecraserai voire mart ; he then added, ' I 
shall dine in my apartment,' and rushed by her. The 
night was spent on the part of the soldiery in all the 



252 GOETHE. 

horrid excesses of rapine. In the morning the dachcsa 
sent to inquire concerning the health of his majost)" the 
emperor, and to solicit an audience. He, who had now 
benefited by his dreams, or by his reflections, returned 
a gracious answer, and invited himself to breakfast with 
hei in her apartment.' In the conversation which en- 
sued. Napoleon ashed her if her husband were mad ; 
upon which she justified the duke by appealing to his 
own magnanimity, asking in her turn if his majesty 
would have approved of his deserting the king of Prus- 
sia at the moment w'hen he was attacked by so potent 
a monarch as himself. The rest of the conversation 
was in the same spirit, uniting with a sufficient conces- 
sion to the circumstances of the moment a dignified 
vindication of a high-minded policy. Napoleon was 
deeply impressed with respect for her, and loudly ex- 
pressed it. For her sake, indeed, he even affected to 
pardon her husband, thus making a merit with her of 
the necessity which he felt, from other motives, for 
showing forbearance towards a family so nearly allied 
to that of St. Petersburg. In 1813 the Grand Duke was 
found at his post in that great gathering of the nations 
■which took place on the stupendous fields of Leipsic, 
and was complimented by the allied sovereigns as onu 
of the most faithful amongst the faithful to the great 
cause, yet undecided, of national independence. 

With respect to Goethe, as a councillor so near the 
duke's person, it may be supposed that his pre-:encc 
was never wanting where it promised to be useful. la 
the earlier campaigns of the duke, Goethe was his com- 
panion ; but in the final contest with Napoleon he was 
unequal to the fatigues of such a post. In all the func- 
tions of peane, however, he continued to be a useful 



OU£XHE. 253 

servant '.o the last, though long released from all official 
duties. Each had indeed most honorably earned the 
gratitude of the other. Goethe had surrendered the 
flower of his years and the best energies of his mind to 
the service of his serene master. On the other hand, 
tha* master had to him been at once his Augustus and 
hi? Maecenas ; such is his own expression. Under him 
he had founded a family, raised an estate, obtained 
titles and decorations from various courts ; and in the 
very vigor of his life he had been allowed to retire, 
with all the honors of long service, to the sanctuary of 
his own study, and to the cultivation of his leisure, as 
the very highest mode in which he could further the 
public interest. 

The life of Goethe was so quiet and so uniform after 
the year 1775, when he may first be said to have en- 
tered into active life, by taking service with the Duke 
of Weimar, that a biographer will find hardly any event 
to notice, except two journeys to Italy, and one cam- 
paign in 1792, until he draws near the close of his long 
career. It cannot interest an English reader to see the 
dates of his successive appointments. It is enough to 
know that they soon raised him to as high a station as 
was consistent with literary leisure ; and that he had 
from the beginning enjoyed the unlimited confidence of 
his sovereign. Nothing remained, in fact, for the sub- 
ject to desire which the prince had not previously vol- 
unteered. In 1825 they were able to look back upon a 
course of uninterrupted friendship, maintained through 
good ajid evil fortunes, unexampled in their agitation 
and interest for fifty years. The duke commemorated 
this remarkable event by a jubilee, and by a medal in 
honor of Goethe. Full of years and honor, this emi« 



254 GOETHE. 

nent man might now begin to think of his depart are. 
However, his serenity continued unbroken nearly for 
two years more, when his illustrious patron died. That 
shock was the first which put his fortitude to trial. In 
1830 others followed; the duchess who had won so 
mucli admiration from Napoleon died ; then followed 
his own son ; and there remained little now to connect 
his wishes with the earth. The family of his patron he 
had lived to see flourishing in his descendants to the 
fourth generation. His own grandchildren were pros- 
perous and happy. His intellectual labors v/ere now 
accomplished. All that remained to wish for was a 
gentle dismission. This he found in the spring of 1 832. 
After a six days' illness, which caused him no apparent 
suffering, on the morning of the 22d of March he 
breathed away as if into a gentle sleep, surrounded by 
his daughter-in-law and her children. Never was a 
death more in harmony with the life it closed ; both 
had the same character of deep and absolute serenity. 
Such is the outline of Goethe's life, traced through 
its principal events. But as the events, after all, bor- 
row their interest mainly from the consideration allowed 
to Goethe as an author, and as a model in the German 
literature, — that being the centre about which all sec- 
ondary feelings of interest in the man must finally 
revolve, — it thus becomes a duty to throw a glance 
over his principal works. Dismissing his songs, to 
which has been ascribed by some critics a very high 
value for their variety and their lyrical enthusiasm; 
dismissing also a large volume of short miscellaneous 
poems ; suited to the occasional circumstances in which 
they arose ; we may throw the capital works of Goethe 
into two classes, philosophic novels and dramas. The 



GOETHE. 255 

novels, which we call 'philosophic by way of expressing 
their main characteristic in being written to serve a 
preconceived purpose, or to embody some peculiar 
views of life, or some aspects of philosophic truth, are 
three, viz., the Wcrthers Leiden; secondly, the Wii- 
helm Mcister ; and, lastly, the Wahloer-wandschaflen. 
The first two exist in English translations ; and though 
the Werther had the disadvantage of coming to ua 
through a French version, already, perhaps, somewhat 
colored and distorted to meet the Parisian standards of 
sentiment, yet, as respects Goethe and his reputation 
amongst us, this wrong has been redressed, or com- 
pensated at least, by the good fortune of his Wilhchn 
Meister, in falling into the hands of a translator whose 
original genius qualified him for sympathizing even to 
excess with any real merits in that work. This novel 
is in its own nature and purpose sufficiently obscure; 
and the commentaries which have been written upon it 
by the Humboldts, Schlegels, &c., make the enigma 
still more enigmatical. We shall not venture abroad 
upon an ocean of discussion so truly dark, and at the 
same time so illimitable. Whether it be qualified to 
excite any deep and sincere feeling of one kind or 
another in the German mind, — in a mind trained 
under German discipline, — this we will consent to 
waive as a question not immediately interesting to our- 
selves. Enough that it has not gained, and -will not 
gain, any attention in this country ; and this not only 
because it is thoroughly deficient in all points of at- 
traction to readers formed upon our English literature, 
but because in some capital circumstances it is abso- 
lutely repulsive. We do not wish to offend the a.l- 
mirers of Goethe; but the simplicity of truth will not 



256 



allow us to conceal, that in yarious points of descrip- 
tion or illustration, and sometimes in the very outline 
of the story, the Wilhelm Meisler is at open war, not 
with decorum and good taste merely, but with moral 
purity and the dignity of human nature. As a novelist, 
Goethe and his reputation are problems, and likely to 
continue such, to the countrymen of Mrs. Inchbald, 
Miss Harriet Lee, Miss Edgeworth, and Sir Walter 
Scott. To the dramatic works of Goethe we are 
di -posed to pay more homage; but neither in the 
absolute amount of our homage at all professing to 
approach his public admirers, nor to distribute the 
proportions of this homage amongst his several per- 
formances according to the graduations of their scale. 
The Iphige?iie is built upon the old subject of Iphigenia 
in Tauris, as treated by Euripides and other Grecian 
dramatists ; and, if we are to believe a Schlegel, it is 
in beauty and effect a mere echo or reverberation from 
the finest strains of the old Grecian music. That it is 
somewhat nearer to the Greek model than a play after 
the fashion of Racine, we grant. Setting aside such 
faithful transcripts from the antique as the Samson 
Agonistes, we might consent to view Goethe as that 
one amongst the moderns who had made the closest 
approximation to the Greek stage. Proximus, we 
might say, with Quintilian, but with him we must add, 
' sed Jongo intervallo ; ' and if in the second rank, yet 
nearer to the third than to the first. Two other 
dramas, the Clavigo and the Egmont, fall below the 
Iphigenie by the very character of their pretensions ; 
the first as too openly renouncing the grandeurs of tha 
ideal ; the second as confessedly violating the historic 
truth of character, without temptation to do so, and 



GOETHE. 257 

Without any consequent indemnification. The Tassn 
has been supposed to realize an Italian beauty of genial 
warmth and of sunny repose ; but from the common 
defect of German criticism — the absence of all suf- 
ficient illustrations — it is as difficult to understand the 
true nature and constituents of the supposed Italian 
standard set up for the regulation of oar judgments, 
as it is to measure the degree of approach made to that 
standard in this particular work. Eugenie is celebra- 
ted for the artificial burnish of the style, but otherwise 
has been little relished. It has the beauty of marble 
sculpture, say the critics of Goethe, but also the cold- 
ness. We arc not often disposed to quarrel with these 
critics as below the truth in their praises ; in this 
instance we arc. The Eugenie is a fragment, or (as 
Goethe himself called it in conversation) a torso, being 
only the first drama in a trilogy or series of three 
dramas, each having a separate plot, whilst all are 
parts of a more general and comprehensive plan. It 
may be charged with languor in the movement of the 
action, and w'ith excess of illustration. Thus, e. g. 
the grief of the prince for the supposed death of his 
daughter, is the monotonous topic which occupies one 
entire act. But the situations, though not those of 
sccnical distress, are so far from being unexciting, that, 
on the contrary, they are too powerfully afflicting. 

The lustre of all these performances, ho\vever, is 
eclipsed by the unrivalled celebrity amongst German 
critics of the Faust. Upon this it is better to say 
nothing than too little. How trifling an advance has 
been made towards clearing the ground for any sane 
criticism, may be understood from this fact, that as yet 
no two people have agreed about the meaning o 
22 



258 GOETHE. 

any separate scene, or about the drift of the whole. 
Neither is this explained by saying, that until lately 
the Faust was a fragment ; for no additional light haa 
dawned upon the main question since the publication 
of the latter part. 

One work there is of Goethe's which falls into 
neither of the classes here noticed ; we mean the 
Hermann and Dorothea, a narrative poem, in hexa- 
meter verse. This appears to have given more plea- 
sure to readers not critical, than any other work of its 
author ; and it is remarkable that it traverses humbler 
ground, as respects both it subject, its characters, and 
its scenery. From this, and other indications of the 
same kind, we are disposed to infer that Goethe mis- 
took his destination ; that his aspiring nature misled 
him; and that his success would have been greater 
had he confined himself to the real in domestic life,' 
without raising his eyes to the ideal. 

We must also mention, that Goethe threw out som.e 
novel speculations in physical science, and particularly 
in physiology, in the doctrine of colors, and in com- 
parative anatomy, which have divided the opinions of 
. critics even more than any of those questions which 
have arisen upon points more directly connected with 
his avowed character of poet. 

It now remains to say a few words by way of sum- 
ming up his pretensions as a man, and his intellectual 
power in the age to which he belonged. His rank and 
value as a moral being are so plain as to be legible to 
him who runs. Everybody must feel that his tempera- 
ment and constitutional tendency was of that happy 
quality, the animal so nicely balanced with the intel- 
lectual, that with any ordinary measure of propriet5 



60ETHE. 259 

he could not be otherwise than a good man, He 
epcaks himself of his own ' virtue,' sans phrase ; and 
■we tax him with no vanity in doing so. As a young 
man even at the universities, which at that time were 
barbarously sensual in Germany, he was (or so much 
we collect from his own Memoirs) eminently capable 
of self-restraint. He preserves a tone of gravity, of 
sincerity, of respect for female dignity, which we 
never find associated with the levity and recklessness 
of vice. We feel throughout, the presence of one 
who, in respecting others, respects himself; and the 
cheerfulness of the presiding tone persuades us at once 
that the narrator is in a healthy moral condition, fears 
no ill, and is conscious of having meditated none. 
Yet at the same time Ave cannot disguise from our 
selves, that the moral temperament of Goethe was one 
which demanded prosperity. Had he been called to 
face great afflictions, singular temptations, or a billowy 
and agitated course of life, our belief is that his nature 
■would have been found unequal to the strife ; he would 
have repeated the mixed and moody character of his 
father. Sunny prosperity was essential to his nature ; 
his virtues were adapted to that condition. And hap- 
pily that was his fate. He had no personal misfor- 
tunes ; his path was joyous in this life ; and even the 
reflex sorrow from the calamities of his friends did not 
press too heavily on his sympathies ; none of these 
were in excess either as to degree or duration. 

In this estimate of Goethe as a moral being, few 
people will differ with us, unless it were the religious 
bigot. And to him we must concede thus much, that 
Goethe was not that religious creature which by nature 
he Avas intended to become. This is to be regrett(;d. 



260 



Goethe was naturally pious and reverential towards 
higher natures ; and it was in the mere levity or 
wantonness of youthful power, partly also through 
that early false bias growing out of the Lisbon earth- 
quake, that he falsified his original destination. Do 
we mean, then, that a childish error could permanently 
master his understanding? Not so; that would have 
been corrected with his growing strength. But having 
once arisen, it must for a long time have movdded his 
feelings ; until corrected, it must have impressed a 
corresponding false bias upon his practical way of 
viewing things ; and that sort of false bias, once 
established, might long survive a mere error of the 
understanding. One thing is undeniable, — Goethe 
had so far corrupted and clouded his natural mind, 
that he did not look up to God, or the system of 
things beyond the grave, with the interest of reverence 
and awe, but with the interest of curiosity. 

Goethe, however, in a moral estiinate, will be viewed 
pretty uniformly. But Goethe intellectually, Goethe 
as a power acting upon the age in Avhich he lived, that 
is another question. Let us put a case ; suppose that 
Goethe's death had occurred fifty years ago, that is, in 
the year 1785, what would have been the general im- 
pression ? Would Europe have felt a shock ? Would 
Europe have been sensible even of the event ? Not at 
all ; it would have been obscurely noticed in the news- 
papers of Germany, as the death of a novelist who had 
produced some effect about ten years before. In 1832, 
it was announced by the post-horns of all Europe as 
the death of him who had written the Wilhelm Meis- 
ter, the Iphigenie, and the Faust, and who had been 
enthroned by some of his admirers on the same seat 



261 



witli Homer and Sliakspcare, as composing what fhcy 
termed the trinity of men of genius. And yet it is a 
fact, that, in the opinion of some amongst the ac- 
knowledged leaders of our own literature for the last 
twenty-five years, the Werther was superior to all 
which followed it, and for mere power was the para- 
mount -work of Goethe. For ourselves, we must 
acknowledge our assent upon the whole to this ver- 
dict; and at the same time we will avow our belief 
that the reputation of Goethe must decline for the 
next generation or two, until it reaches its just level. 
Three causes, we are persuaded, have concurred to 
push it so far beyond the proportion of real and 
genuine interest attached to his works, for in Germany 
his works are little read, and in this country not at 
all. First, his extraordinary age ; for the last twenty 
years Goethe had been the patriarch of the German 
literature. Secondly, the splendor of his official rank 
at the court of Weimar ; he was the minister and 
private friend of the patriot sovereign amongst the 
princes of Germany. Thirdly, the quantity of enig- 
matical and unintelligible writing which he has 
designedly thrown into his latter works, by way of 
keeping up a system of discussion and strife upon 
his own meaning amongst the critics of his country. 
These disputes, had his meaning been of any value in 
his own eyes, he would naturally have settled by a few 
authoritative words from himself; but it was his policy 
to keep alive the feud in a case where it was of im- 
portance that his name should continue to agitate the 
world, but of none at all that he should be rightly 
interpreted. 



SCHILLER. 

John Christopher Fkedekick yon Schilleb 
was born at Marbacb, a small town in the ducby of 
Wiirtemberg, on tbe lOtb day of November, 1759. It 
will aid tbe reader in synchronizing the periods of 
this great man's life with the corresponding events 
throughout Christendom, if we direct his attention to 
the fact, that Schiller's birth nearly coincided in point 
of time with that of Robert Burns, and that it pre- 
ceded that of Napoleon by about ten years. 

The position of Schiller is remarkable. In the land 
of bis birth, by those who undervalue him the most, 
he is ranked as the second name in German literature ; 
everywhere else he is ranked as the first. For us, 
who are aliens to Germany, Schiller is the representa- 
tive of the German intellect in its highest form ; and 
to him, at all events, whether first or second, it is cer- 
tainly due, that the German intellect has become a 
known power, and a power of growing magnitude, for 
the great commonwealth of Christendom. Luther and 
Kepler, potent intellects as they were, did not make 
themselves known as Germans. The revolutionary 
vigor of the one, the starry lustre of the other, blended 
with the convulsions of reformation, or with the aurora 
of ascending science, in too kindly and genial a tone to 

[2631 



2G4 SCHILLEK. 

call off the attention from the work which thej' per- 
formed, from the service which they promoted, to the 
circumstances of their personal position. Their coun- 
try, their birth, their abode, even their separate exist- 
ence, was merged in the mighty cause to which they 
lent their cooperation. And thus at the beginning of 
the sixteenth century, thus at the beginning of the 
seventeenth, did the Titan sons of Germany defeat 
their own private pretensions by the very grandeur of 
their merits. Their interest as patriots was lost and 
confounded in their paramount interest as cosmopo- 
lites. What they did for man and for human dignity 
eclipsed what they had designed for Germany. After 
them there was a long interlunar period of darkness 
for the land of the Rhine and the Danube. The 
German energy, too spasmodically excited, suffered a 
-jollapse. Throughout the whole of the seventeenth 
century, but one vigorous mind arose for permanent 
effects in literature. This was Optiz, a poet who de- 
serves even yet to be read with attention, but who is 
DO more worthy to be classed as the Dry den, whom 
his too partial countrymen have styled him, than the 
Germany of the Thirty Years' War of taking rank by 
the side of civilized and cultured England during the 
Cromwellian era, or Klopstock of sitting on the s;imo 
throne with Milton. Leibnitz was the one sole po- 
tentate in the fields of intellect whom the Germany 
of this century produced ; and he, like Luther and 
Kepler, impresses us rather as a European than as a 
German mind, partly perhaps from his having pursued 
his self-development in foreign lands, partly from his 
large circle of foreign connections, but most or all from 
Lis having written chiefly in French or in Latin 



SCHILLER. 265 

Passing onwards to the eighteenth centur)^ we find, 
through its earlier half, an absolute wilderness, unre- 
claimed and without promise of natural vegetation, as 
the barren arena on which the few insipid writers of 
Germany paraded. The torpor of academic dulness 
domineered over the length and breadth of the land. 
And as these academic bodies were universally found 
harnessed in the equipage of petty courts, it followed 
that the lethargies of pedantic dulness were uniformly 
deepened by the lethargies of aulic and ceremonial 
dulucss ; so that, if the reader represents to himself 
the very abstract of birthday odes, sycophantish dedi- 
cations, and court sermons, he will have some adequate 
idea of the sterility and the mechanical formality 
which at that era spread the sleep of death over Ger- 
man literature. Literature, the very word literature, 
points the laughter of scorn to what passed under that 
name during the period of Gottsched. That such a 
man indeed as this Gottsched, equal at the best to the 
composition of a Latin grammar or a school arithmetic, 
should for a moment have presided over the German 
muses, stands out as in itself a brief and significant 
memorial, too certain for contradiction, and yet almost 
too gross for belief, of the apoplectic sleep under 
Avhich the mind of central Europe at that era lay op- 
prev<!sed. The rust of disuse had corroded the very 
principles of activity. And, as if the double night of 
academic dulness, combined with the dulness of court 
• inanities, had not been sufficient for the stifling of all 
native energies, the feebleness of French models (and 
of these moreover naturalized through still feebler 
imitations) had become the law and standard for all 
attempts at original composition. The darkness of 
23 



266 SCHILLEH. 

night, it is usually said, grows deeper as it approaclies 
the dawn ; and the very enormity of that prostration 
under which the German intellect at this time groaned, 
was the most certain pledge to any observing eye nt' 
that inlense re-action soon to stir and kindle among 
the smouldering activities of this spell-bound people. 
This re-action, however, was not abrupt and theatrical. 
It moved through slow stages and by equable grada- 
tions. It might be said to commence from the middle 
of the eighteenth century, that is, about nine years 
before the birth of Schiller ; but a progress of forty 
years had not carried it so towards its meridian alti- 
tude, as that the sympathetic shock from the French 
Kevolution was by one fraction more rude and shatter- 
ing than the public torpor still demanded. There is a 
memorable correspondency throughout all members of 
Protestant Christendom in whatsoever relates to litera- 
ture and intellectual advance. Plowever imperfect the 
organization which binds them together, it was suffi- 
cient even in these elder times to transmit reciprocally 
from one to every other, so much of that illumination 
which could be gathered into books, th?t no Christian 
state could be much in advance of another, supposing 
that Popery opposed no barriers to free communica- 
tion, unless only in those points which depended upon 
local gifts of nature, upon the genius of a particular 
people, or upon the excellence of its institutions. 
These advantages were incommunicable, let the free- 
dom of intercourse have been what it might. England 
could not send off by posts or by heralds her iron and 
coals ; she could not send the indomitable energy of 
her population ; she could not send the absolute se- 
curity of property ; she could not send the good faith 



SCHILLEB. 267 

of her parliaments. These were gifts indigenous tc 
herself, either through the temperament of her people, 
or through the original endowments of her soil. But 
her condition of moral sentiment, her high-toned civic 
elevation, her atmosphere of political feeling and 
popular boldness, much of these she could and did 
transmit, by the radiation of the press, to the very 
extremities of the German empire. Not only were 
our books translated, but it is notorious to those ac- 
quainted with German novels, or other pictures of 
German society, that as early as the Seven Years' 
"War, (1756-1763,) in fact from the very era when 
Cave and Dr. Johnson first made the parliamentary 
debates accessible to the English themselves, most of 
the German journals repeated, and sent forward as by 
telegraph, those senatorial displays to every village 
throughout Germany. From the polar latitudes to the 
Mediterranean, from the mouths of the Rhine to the 
Euxine, there was no other exhibition of free delibera- 
tive eloquence in any popular assembly. And the 
Luise of Voss alone, a metrical idyl not less valued 
for its truth of portraiture than our own Vicar of 
Wakefield, will show, that the most sequestered clergy- 
man of a rural parish did not think his breakfast 
equipage complete without the latest report from the 
great senate that sat in London. Hence we need not 
be astonished that German and English literature were 
found by the French Revolution in pretty nearly the 
same condition of semi-vigilance and imperfect anima- 
tion. That mighty event reached us both, reached us 
all, we may say, (speaking of Protestant states,) at the 
same moment, by the same tremenaous galvanism. 
1'he snake, the intellectual snake, that lay in ambush 



268 SCHILLER. 

among all nations, roused itself, sloughed itself, re* 
ncwed its youth, in all of them at the same period. A 
new world opened upon us all ; new revolutions of 
thought arose ; new and nobler activities were born ; 
' and other palms were won.' 

But by and through Schiller it was, as its main 
organ, that this great revolutionary impulse expressed 
itself. Already, as we have said, not less than forty 
years before the earthquake by which France exploded 
and projected the scoria of her huge crater over all 
Christian lands, a stirring had commenced among the 
dry bones of intellectual Germany ; and symptoms 
arose that the breath of life would soon disturb, by 
nobler agitations than by petty personal quarrels, thf< 
deathlike repose even of the German universities. 
Precisely in those bodies, however, it was, in those as 
connected with tyrannical governments, each academic 
body being shackled to its own petty centre of local 
despotism, that the old spells remained unlinked ; and 
to them, equally remarkable as firm trustees of truth, 
and as obstinate depositories of darkness or of super- 
annuated prejudice, we must ascribe the slowness of 
the German movement on the path of re-ascent. Mean- 
time the earliest torch-bearer to the murky literature 
of this great land, this crystallization of political states, 
was Bodmer. This man had no demoniac genius, 
such as the service required ; but he had some taste, 
and, what was better, he had some sensibility. He 
lived among the Alps ; and his reading lay among the 
alpine sublimities of Milton and Shakspeare. Through 
his very eyes he imbibed a daily scorn of Gottsched 
ana his monstrous compound of German coarseness, 
with French sensual levity. He could not look at hia 



SCHILLEH. 269 

native Alps, but he saw in them, and their austere 
grandeurs or tbeir dread realities, a spiritual reproach 
to the liollowness and falsehood of that dull imposture, 
which Gottschcd offered by way of substitute for 
nature. He was taught by the Alps to crave for 
something nobler and deeper. Bodmer, though far 
below such a function, rose by favor of circumstances 
into an apostle or missionary of truth for Germany. 
He translated passages of English literature. He in- 
oculated with his own sympathies the more fervent 
mind of the youthful Klopstock, who visited him in 
Switzerland. And it soon became evident, that Ger- 
many was not dead, but sleeping ; and once again, 
legibly for any eye, the pulses of life began to play freely 
through the vast organization of central Europe. 

Klopstock, however, though a fervid, a religious, 
and, for that reason, an anti-Gallican mind, was himself 
an abortion. Such, at least, is our own opinion of this 
poet. He was the child and creature of enthusiasm, 
but of enthusiasm not allied with a masculine intellect, 
or any organ for that capacious vision, and meditative 
range, which his subjects demanded. He was essen- 
tially thoughtless, betrays everywhere a most effeminate 
quality of sensibility, and is the sport of that pseudo- 
enthusiasm, and baseless rapture, which we see so 
)ften allied with the excitement of strong liquors. In 
taste, or the sense of proportions and congruencies, or 
the harmonious adaptations, he is perhaps the most 
defective writer extant. 

But if no patriarch of German literature, in the sense 
of having shaped the moulds in which it was to flow, in 
*ie sense of having disciplined its taste, or excited its 
rivalship, by classical rr odels of excellence, or raised a 



270 SCHILLEK. 

finislied standard of style, perhaps we must concede 
that, on a minor scale, Klopstock did something of that 
service in every one of these departments. His works 
were at least Miltonic in their choice of subjects, if 
ludicrously non-Miltonic in their treatment of those 
subjects. And whether due to him or not, it is 
undeniable that in his time the mother-tongue of Ger- 
many revived from the most absolute degradation on 
record, to its ancient purity. In the time of Gottsched, 
the authors of Germany wrote a macaronic j argon, in 
which French and Latin made up a considerable pro- 
portion of every sentence : nay, it happened often that 
foreign words were inflected with German forms ; and 
the whole result was such as to remind the reader of 
the medical examination in the Malade Imaginaire of 
Moliere : 

• Quid poetea est k faire ? 

Saignare 

Baignare 

Ensuita purgare,' &c. 

Now, is it not reasonable to ascribe some share in the 
restoration of good to Klopstock, both because his own 
writings exhibit nothing of this most abject euphuism, 
(a euphuism expressing itself not in fantastic refine- 
ments on the staple of the language, but altogether in 
rejecting it for foreign words and idioms,) and because 
he wrote expressly on the subject of style and compo- 
sition ? 

Wieland, meantime, if not enjoying so intense an 
acceptation as Klopstock, had a more extensive one ; 
and it is in vain to deny him the praise of a festive, 
brilliant, and most versatile wit. The Schlegels showed 
the haughty malignity of their ungenerous natures, in 



SCHILLER. 271 

depreciating Wicland, at a time when old age had laid 
a freezing hand upon the energy which he would once 
have put forth in defending himself. He was the 
Voltaire of Germany, and very much more than the 
Voltaire ; for his romantic and legendary poems are 
above the level of Voltaire. But, on the other hand, 
he was a Voltaire in sensual impurity. To work, to 
carry on a plot, to affect his readers by voluptuous im- 
pressions, — these were the unworthy aims of Wieland ; 
and though a good-natured critic would not refuse to 
make some allowance for a youthful poet's aberrations 
in this respect, yet the indulgence cannot extend itself 
to mature years. Aq. old man corrupting his readers, 
attempting to corrupt them, or relying for his effect 
upon corruptions already effected, in the purity of their 
affections, is a hideous object; and that must be a 
precarious influence indeed which depends for its dura- 
bility upon the licentiousness of men. Wieland, there- 
fore, except in parts, will not last as a national idol ; 
but such he was nevertheless for a time. 

Bijrger wrote too little of any expansive compass to 
give the measure of his powers, or to found national 
impression ; Lichtenberg, though a very gracious ob- 
server, never rose into what can be called a power, he 
did not modify his age ; yet these were both men of 
extraordinary talent, and BiJrger a man of undoubted 
genius. On the other hand, Lessing was merely a 
man of talent, but of talent in the highest degree 
adapted to popularity. His very defects, and the shal- 
lowness of his philosophy, promoted his popularity ; 
and by comparison with the French ci'itics on the 
dramatic or scenical proprieties he is ever profound. 
His plummet, if not suited to the soundless depths of 



272 SCHILLER. 

Shakspeare, was able ten times over to fatliom the little 
rivulets of Parisian philosophy. This he did cflectu- 
ally, and thus unconsciously levelled the path for 
Shakspeare, and for that supreme dominion which he 
has since held over the German stage, by crushing 
with his sarcastic shrewdness the pretensions of all who 
stood in the way. At that time, and even yet, the fimc- 
tions of a literary man were very important in Germa- 
ny ; the popular mind and the popular instinct pointed 
one way, those of the little courts another. Multitudes 
of little German states (many of which were absorbed 
since 1816 by the process of mediatizing) made it their 
ambition to play at keeping mimic armies in their pay, 
and to ape the greater military sovereigns, by encour- 
aging French literature only, and the French language 
at their courts. It was this latter propensity which 
had generated the anomalous macaronic dialect, of 
Avhich we have already spoken as a characteristic cir- 
cumstance in the social features of literary Germany dur- 
ing the first half of the eighteenth century. Nowhere 
else, within the records of human follies do we find a 
corresponding case, in which the government and the 
patrician orders in the state, taking for granted, and 
absolutely postulating the utter worthlessness for 
intellectual aims of those in and by whom they main- 
tained their own grandeur and independence, undis- 
guisedly and even professedly sought to ally themselves 
Avith a foreign literature, foreign literati, and a foreign 
language. In this unexampled display of scorn for 
native resources, and the consequent collision between 
the two principles of action, all depended upon the 
people themselves. For a time the wicked and most 
profligate contempt of the local governments for that 



SCHILJLISK. 273 

native merit which it was their duty to evoke and to 
cherish, naturally enough produced its own justifica- 
tion. Like Jews or slaves, whom all the world have 
agreed to hold contemptible, the German literati found 
it hard to make head against so obstinate a prejudg- 
ment ; and too often they became all that they were 
presumed to be. Sint Mcecenates, non deerunt, Flacce, 
Marones. And the converse too often holds good — 
that when all who should have smiled scowl upon a 
man, he turns out the abject thing they have predicted. 
Where Frenchified Fredericks sit upon German thrones, 
it should not surprise us to see a crop of Gottscheds 
arise as the best fruitage of the land. But when there 
is any latent nobility in the popular mind, such scorn, 
by its very extremity, will call forth its own counterac- 
tion. It was perhaps good for Germany that a prince 
so eminent in one aspect as Fritz der einziger,'^ should 
put on record so emphatically his intense conviction, 
that no good thing could arise out of Germany. This 
creed was expressed by the quality of the French minds 
which he attracted to his court. The very refuse and 
dregs of the Parisian coteries satisfied his hunger for 
French garbage : the very oflfal of their shambles met 
the demand of his palate ; even a Maupertuis, so long- 
as he could produce a French baptismal certificate, was 
good enough to manufacture into the president of a 
Berlin academy. Such scorn challenged a re-action ; 
the contest lay between the thrones of Germany and 
the popular intellect, and the final result was inevitable. 

* ' Freddy the unique ; ' which is the name by which the 
Prussians expressed their admiration of the martial and indom 
itablc, though somewhat fantastic, king.' 



27i SCHILLER. 

Once aware tliat they were insulted, once enliglitenod 
to th.e full consciousness of the scorn which trampled on 
them as intellectual and predestined Heliots, even the 
mild-tempered Germans became fierce, and now began 
to aspire, not merely under the ordinary instincts of 
personal ambition, but with a vindictive feeling, and as 
conscious agents of retribution. It became a pleasure 
with the German author, that the very same works 
which elevated himself, wreaked his nation upon their 
princes, and poured retorted scorn upon their most un- 
generous and unparental sovereigns. Already, in the 
reign of the martial Frederick, the men who put most 
weight of authority into his contempt of Germans, — 
Euler, the matchless Euler, Lambert, and Immanuel 
Kant, — had vindicated the preeminence of German 
mathematics. Already, in 1755, had the same Imman- 
uel Kant, whilst yet a probationer for the chair of logic 
in a Prussian university, sketched the outline of that 
philosophy which has secured the admiration, though 
not the assent, of all men known and proved to have 
imderstood it, of all men able to state its doctrines in 
terms admissible by its disciples. Already, and even 
previously, had Haller, who wrote in German, placed 
himself at the head of the current physiology. And in 
the fields of science or of philosophy, the victory was 
already decided for the German intellect in competition 
with the French. 

But the fields of literature were still comparatively 
barren. Klopstock was at least an anomaly ; Lessing 
did not present himself in the impassioned walks of 
literature ; Herder was viewed too much in the exclu- 
sive and professional light of a clergyman ; and, 
with the exception of John Paul Richter, a man of 



SCHILLER. 275 

most original genius, but quite unfitted for general 
popularity, no commanding mind arose in Germany 
witli powers for levying homage from foreign nations, 
until tlie appearance, as a great scenical poet, of Fred- 
erick Scliiller. 

The father of this great poet was Caspar Schiller, an 
officer in the military service of the Duke of Wiirtem- 
berg. He had previously served as a surgeon in the 
Bavarian army ; but on his final return to his native 
country of Wiirtemberg, and to the service of his na- 
tive prince, he laid aside his medical character for ever, 
and obtained a commission as ensign and adjutant. 
In 17G3, the Peace of Paris threw him out of his mili- 
tary employment, with the nominal rank of captain. 
But, having conciliated the duke's favor, he was still 
borne on the books of the ducal establishment ; and, as 
a planner of ornamental gardens, or in some other 
civil capacity, he continued to serve his serene highness 
for the rest of his life. 

The parents of Schiller were both pious, upright 
persons, with that loyal fidelity to duty, and that 
humble simplicity of demeanor towards their superiors, 
which is so often found among the unpretending na- 
tives of Germany. It is probable, however, that 
Schiller owed to his mother exclusively the preterna- 
tural endowments of his intellect. She was of humble 
origin, the daughter of a baker, and not so fortunate 
as to have received much education. But she was 
apparently rich in gifts of the heart and the imder- 
standing. She read poetry with delight ; and through 
the profound filial love Avith which she had inspired 
her son, she found it easy to communicate her own 
literary tastes. Her husband was not illiterate, and 



276 SCHILLER. 

had in mature life so laudably applied himself tc tha 
imiDrovement of his own defective knowledge, that at 
length he thought himself capable of appearing before 
the public as an author. His book related simply to 
the subjects of his professional experience as a horti- 
culturist, and was entitled Die Baumzucht, iin Grossen 
(On the management of Forests). Some merit we 
must suppose it to have had, since the public called for 
a second edition of it long after his own death, and 
even after that of his illustrious son. And although 
he was a plain man, of no pretensions, and possibly 
even of slow faculties, he has left behind him a prayer, 
in which there is one petition of sublime and pathetic 
piety, worthy to be remembered by the side of Agar's 
wise prayer against almost the equal temptations of 
poverty and riches. At the birth of his son, he had 
been reflecting with sorrowful anxiety, not unminglcd 
with self-reproach, on his own many disqualifications 
for conducting the education of the child. But at 
length, reading in his own manifold imperfections but 
so many reiterations of the necessity that he should 
rely upon God's bounty, converting his very defects 
into so many arguments of hope and confidence in 
Heaven, he prayed thus : ' Oh God, that knowest my 
poverty in good gifts for my son's inheritance, gracious- 
ly permit that, even as the want of bread became to 
thy sou's hunger-stricken flock in the wilderness the 
pledge of overflowing abundance, so likewise my dark- 
ness may, in its sad extremity, carry with it the meas- 
ure of thy unfathomable light ; and because I, thy 
worm, cannot give to my son the least of blessings, do 
thou give the greatest ; because in my hands there is 
aot any thing, do thou from thine pour cmt all things ; 



SCHILLEB. 277 

and ttat temple of a new-born spirit, which I cannot 
adorn even with earthly ornaments of dust and ashes, 
do thou irradiate with the celestial adornment of thy 
presence, and finally with that peace that passeth all 
understanding.' 

Reared at the feet of parents so pious and affection- 
ate, Schiller would doubtless pass a happy childhood ; 
and probably to this ntter tranquillity of his earlier 
years, to his seclusion from all that could create pain, 
or even anxiety, we must ascribe the unusual dearth of 
anecdotes from this period of his life ; a dearth which 
has tempted some of his biographers into improving 
and embellishing some puerile stories, which a man of 
sentie will inevitably reject as too trivial for his gravity 
or too fantastical for his faith. That nation is happy, 
according to a common adage, which furnishes little 
business to the historian ; for such a vacuity in facts 
argues a condition of perfect peace and silent prosper- 
ity. That childhood is happy, or may generally be 
presumed such, which has furnished few records of 
external experience, little that has appeared in doing or 
in suffering to the eyes of companions ; for the child 
who has been made happy by early thoughtfulness, 
and by infantine struggles with the great ideas of his 
origin and his destination, (ideas which settle with a 
deep, dove-like brooding iipon the mind of childhood, 
more than of mature life, vexed with inroads from the 
noisy world,) will not manifest the workings of his 
spirit by much of external activity. The falleniis 
semita vitce, that path of noiseless life, which eludes 
and deceives the conscious notice both of its sub- 
ject and of all around him, opens equally to the 
man and to the child ; and the happiest of all child- 



278 SCHILLEK. 

* 

hoods will have heen that of which the happiness has 
survived and expressed itself, not in distinct records, 
but in deep affection, in abiding love, and the haunt- 
ings of meditative power. 

Such a childhood, in the bosom of maternal tender- 
ness, was probably passed by Schiller ; and his first 
awaking to the world of strife and perjilexity happened 
in his fourteenth year. Up to that period his life had 
been vagrant, agreeably to the shifting necessities of the 
ducal service, and his education desultory and domes- 
tic. But in the year 1773 he was solemnly entered as 
a member of a new academical institution, founded by 
the reigning duke, and recently translated to his little 
capital of Stutgard. This change took place at the 
special request of the duke, who, under the mask of 
patronage, took upon himself the severe control of the 
whole simple family. The parents were probably both 
too humble and dutiful in spirit towards one whom they 
regarded in the double light of sovereign lord and of 
personal benefactor, ever to miu-mur at the ducal be- 
hests, far less to resist them. The duke was for them 
an earthly providence ; and they resigned themselves, 
together with their child, to the disposal of him who 
dispensed their earthly blessings, not less meekly than 
of Him whose vicegerent they presumed him to be. In 
such a frame of mind, requests are but another name 
for commands ; and thus it happened that a second 
change arose upon the first, even more determinately 
fatal to the young Schiller's happiness. Hitherto he 
had cherished a day-dream pointing to the pastoral 
office in some rural district, as that which would har- 
monize best with his intellectual purposes, with his 
love of quiet, and by means of its preparatory require' 



SCHILLER. 279 

mcnts, best also with his own peculiar choice of studies. 
But this scheme he now felt himself compelled to 
sacrifice ; and the two evils which fell upon him con- 
currently in his new situation, were, first, the formal 
military discipline and monotonous routine of duty ; 
secondly, the uncongenial direction of the studies, which 
were shaped entirely to the attainment of legal know- 
ledge, and the narrow service of the local tribunals. 
So illiberal and so exclusive a system of education 
was revolting to the expansive mind of Schiller ; and 
the military bondage under which this system was 
enforced, shocked the aspiring nobility of his moral 
nature, not less than the technical narrowness of the 
studies shocked his understanding. In point of ex- 
pense, the whole establishment cost nothing at all to 
those parents who were privileged servants of the 
duke ; in this number were the parents of Schiller, 
and that single consideration weighed too powerfully 
upon his filial piety to allow of his openly murmuring 
at his lot ; while on their part the parents were equally 
shy of encouraging a disgust which too obviously 
tended to defeat the promises of ducal favor. This 
system of monotonous confinement was therefore car- 
ried to its completion, and the murmurs of the young 
Schiller were either dutifully suppressed, or found 
vent only in secret letters to a friend. In one point 
only Schiller was able to improve his condition ; jointly 
\vith the juristic department, was another for training 
young aspirants to the medical profession. To this, 
as promising a more enlarged scheme of study, Schiller 
by permission transferred himself in 1775. But what- 
ever relief he mij^ht find in the nature of his new 



280 SCHILLER. 

studies, he fooind none at all in tlie system of personal 
discipline which prevailed. 

Under the oppression of this detested system, and 
by pure re-action against its wearing persecutions, we 
learn from Schiller himself, that in his nineteenth year 
he undertook the earliest of his surviving plays, the 
Robbers, beyond doubt the most tempestuous, the 
most volcanic, we might say, of all juvenile creations 
anywhere recorded. He himself calls it ' a monster,' 
and a monster it is ; but a monster which has never 
failed to convulse the heart of young readers with the 
temperament of intellectual enthusiasm and sensibility. 
True it is, and nobody was more aware of that fact 
than Schiller himself in after years, the characters of 
the three Moors, father and sons, are mere impossibili- 
ties ; and some readers, in whom the judicious ac- 
quaintance with human life in its realities has outrun 
the sensibilities, are so much shocked by these hyper- 
natural phenomena, that they are incapable of enjoying 
the terrific sublimities which on that basis of the vis- 
ionary do really exist. A poet, perhaps Schiller might 
have alleged, is entitled to assume hypothetically so 
much in the previous positions or circumstances of his 
agents as is requisite to the basis from which he starts. 
It is undeniable that Shakspeare and others have 
availed themselves of this principle, and with memor- 
able success. Shaksjjcare, for instance, postulates his 
witches, his Caliban, his Ariel : grant, he virtually 
says, such modes of spiritual existence or of spiritual 
relations as a possibility : do not expect me to demon- 
strate this, and upon that single concession I will rear 
a superstructure that shall be self-consistent ; every- 



SCHILLEK. 281 

thing shall be internally coherent and reconciled, 
whatever be its external relations as to our human 
experience. But this species of assumption, on the 
largest scale, is more Avithin the limits of credibility 
and plausible verisimilitude when applied to modes of 
existence, which, after all, are in such total darkness 
to us, (the limits of the possible being so undefined 
and shadowy as to what can or cannot exist,) than the 
very slightest liberties taken with human character, or 
with those principles of action, motives, and feelings, 
upon which men would move under given circumstan- 
ces, or Avith the modes of action which in common 
prudence they would be likely to adopt. The truth 
is, that, as a coherent work of art, the Robbers is 
indefensible ; but, however monstrous it may be pro- 
nounced, it possesses a power to agitate and convulse, 
which will always obliterate its great faults to the 
young, and to all whose judgment is not too much 
developed. And the best apology for Schiller is found 
in his own words, in recording the circiimstances and 
causes under which this anomalous production arose. 
' To escape,' says he, ' from the formalities of a disci- 
pline which was odious to my heart, I sought a retreat 
in the Avorld of ideas and shadowy possibilities, while 
as yet I knew nothing at all of that human world 
from which I was harshly secluded by iron bars. 
Of men, the actual men in this world below, I knew 
absolutely nothing at the time when I composed my 
Robbers. Four hundred human beings, it is true, 
were my fellow-prisoners in this abode ; but they were 
mere tautologies and reiterations of the self-same 
mechanic creature, and like so many plaster-casta 
24 



282 SCHILLER. 

from the same original statue. Thus situated, of 
necessity I failed. In making the attempt, my chis'jl 
brought out a monster, of which [and that was 
fortunate] the world had no type or resemblance to 
show.' 

Meantime this demoniac drama produced very oppo- 
site results to Schiller's reputation. Among the young 
men of Germany it was received with an enthusiasm 
absolutely unparalleled, though it is perfectly untrue 
that it excited some persons of rank and splendid 
expectations (as a current fable asserted) to imitate 
Charles Moor in becoming robbers. On the other 
hand, the play was of too powerful a cast not in any 
case to have alarmed his serenity the Duke of Wiir- 
temberg ; for it argued a most revolutionary mind, and 
the utmost audacity of self-will. But besides this 
general ground of censure, there arose a special one, in 
a quarter so remote, that this one fact may serve to 
evidence the extent as well as intensity of the impres- 
sion made. The territory of the Grisons had been, 
called by Spiegelberg, one of the robbers, ' The Thief's 
Athens.' Upon this the magistrates of that country 
presented a complaint to the duke ; and his highness 
having cited Schiller to his presence, and severely 
reprimanded him, issued a decree that this dangerous 
young student should henceforth confine himself to his 
medical studies. 

The persecution which followed exhibits such extra- 
ordinary exertions of despotism, even for that land of 
irresponsible power, that we must presume the duke to 
have relied more upon the hold which he had upon 
Schiller through his affection for parents so absolutely 
^pendent on his highness's power, than upon any 



SCHILLER. 283 

laws, good or bad, wliicli he could have pleaded as hia 
warrant. Germany, however, thought otherwise of 
the new tragedy than the serene critic of Wiirtemberg : 
it was performed with vast applause at the neigh- 
boring city of Mannheim ; and thither, under a most 
excusable interest in his own play, the young poet 
clandestinely went. On his return he was placed under 
arrest. And soon afterwards, being now thoroughly 
disgusted, and, with some reason, alarmed by the 
tyranny of the duke, Schiller finally eloped to Mann- 
heim, availing himself of the confusion created in 
Stutgard by the visit of a foreign prince. 

At Mannheim he lived in the house of Dalberg, a 
man of some rank and of sounding titles, but in Mann- 
heim known chiefly as the literary manager (or what is 
called director) of the theatre. This connection aided 
in determining the subsequent direction of Schiller's 
talents ; and his Fiesco, his Intrigue and Love, his 
Don Carlos, and his Maria Stuart, followed within a 
short period of years. None of these are so far free 
from the faults of the Robbers as to merit a separate 
notice ; for with less power, they are almost equally 
licentious. Finally, however, he brought out his 
Wallenstein, an immortal drama, and, beyond all 
competition, the nearest in point of excellence to the 
dramas of Shakspeare. The position of the characters 
of Max Piccolomini and the Princess Thekla is the 
finest instance of what, in a critical sense, is called 
relief, that literature offers. Young, innocent, un- 
fortunate, among a camp of ambitious, guilty, and 
blood-stained men, they ofi"er a depth and solemnity 
of impression which is equally required by way of 
contrast and of final repose. 



284 SCHILLEK. 

From Mannheim, where he had a transient love affair 
with Laura Dalberg, the daughter of his friend the 
director, Schiller removed to Jena, the celebrated uni- 
versity in the territory of Weimar. The Grand Duke 
of that German Florence was at this time gathering 
around him the most eminent of the German intellects ; 
and he was eager to enroll Schiller in the body of his 
professors. In 1799 Schiller received the chair of 
civil history ; and not long after he married Miss 
Lengefeld, with whom he had been for some time 
acquainted. In 1803 he was ennobled; that is, he 
was raised to the rank of gentleman, and entitled to 
attach the prefix of Vo'n to his name. His income 
was now sufficient for domestic comfort and respect- 
able independence ; while in the society of Goethe, 
Herder, and other eminent wits, he found even more 
relaxation for his intellect, than his intellect, so fer- 
vent and so self-sustained, could require. 

Meantime the health of Schiller was gradually under- 
mined : his lungs had been long subject to attacks of 
disease ; and the warning indications which constantly 
arose of some deep-seated organic injuries in his pul- 
mona ry system ought to have put him on his guard for 
some years before his death. Of all men, however, it 
is remarkable that Schiller was the most criminally 
negligent of his health ; remarkable, we say, because 
for a period of four years Schiller had applied himself 
seriously to the study of medicine. The strong coffee, 
and the wine which he drank, may not have been so 
injurious as his biographers suppose ; but his habit of 
sitting up through the night, and defrauding his wasted 
frame of all natural and restorative sleep, had some- 
thing in it of that guilt which belongs to suicide. On 



scnixLER. 285 

the Qtli of May, I8O0, liis complaint readied its crisis. 
Early in the morning he became delirious ; at noon his 
delirium abated ; and at four in the afternoon he feli 
into a gentle unagitated sleep, from which he soon 
awoke. Conscious that he now stood on the veiy 
edge of the grave, he calmly and fervently took a last 
farewell of his friends. At six in the evening he fell 
again into sleep, from which, however, he again awoke 
once more to utter the memorable declaration, ' that 
many things were growing plain and clear to his un- 
derstanding.' After this the cloud of sleep again set- 
tled upon him ; a sleep which soon changed into the 
cloud of death. 

This event produced a profound impression through- 
out Germany. The theatres were closed at Weimar, 
and the funeral was condvicted with public honors. 
The position in point of time, and the peculiar ser- 
vices of Schiller to the German literature, we have 
already stated : it remains to add, that in person he 
was tall, and of a strong bony structure, but not 
muscular, and strikingly lean. His forehead was 
lofty, his nose aquiline, and his mouth almost of Gre- 
cian beauty. With other good points about his face, 
and with auburn hair, it may be presumed that his 
whole appearance was pleasing and impressive, while 
in latter years the character of sadness and contempla- 
tive sensibility deepened the impression of his counte- 
nance. We have said enough of his intellectual merit, 
which places him in our judgment at the head of the 
Trans-Rhenish literature. But we add in concluding, 
that Frederick von Schiller was something more than 
a great author ; he was also in an eminent sense a 



286 SCHILLER. 

great man ; and his works are not more wortTiy of being 
studied for their singular force and originality, than 
his moral character from its nobility and aspiring 
grandeur. 



ESSAYS ON THE POETS, 



OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS. 



CONTENTS 



FAGB 
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH . . . . S 

PiiRCY BYSSIIE SHELLEY ..... 42 

JOHN KEATS ....... 77 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH ..... 101 

ALEXANDER POPE . . . . . .147 

WILLIAM GODWIN ...... 207 

JOHN FOSTER ....... 219 

WILLIAM HAZLITT ...... 227 

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOB . . . . ,244 



ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 



Heretofore, upon one impulse or another, 1 have 
retiaced fugitive memorials of several persons cele- 
brated in our own times ; but I have never undertaken 
an examination of any man's w^ritings. The one labor 
is, comparatively, without an effort ; the other is both 
difficult, and, with regard to contemporaries, is invidi- 
ous. In genial moments the characteristic remem- 
brances of men expand as fluently as buds travel into 
blossoms ; but criticism, if it is to be conscientious and 
profound, and if it is applied to an object so unlimited 
as poetry, must be almost as unattainable by any hasty 
effort as fine poetry itself " Thou hast convinced 
me," says Rasselas to Imlac, " that it is impossible to be 
a poet ; " so vast had appeared to be the array of qualifi- 
cations. But, with the same ease, Imlac might have 
convinced the prince that it was impossible to be a critic. 
And hence it is, that, in the sense of absolute and 
philosophic criticism, we have little or none; for, before 
thai can exist, we must have a good psychology ; whereas, 
at present, we have none at all. 

If, however, it is more difficult to write critical 
sketches than sketches of personal recollections, often 

(5) 



ON WORDSWORTH S POETRY. 



It is much less connected with painful scruples. Of 
books, resting only on grounds which, in sincerity, you 
believe to be true, and speaking without anger or scorn, 
you can hardly say the thing which ought to be taken 
amiss. But of men and women you dare not, and must 
nf^t, tell all that chance may have revealed to you. 
Sometimes you are summoned to silence by pity for that 
general human infirmity, which you also, the writer, 
share. Sometimes you are checked by the consideration 
that perhaps your knowledge of the case was originally 
gained under opportunities allowed by confidence or by 
unsuspecting carelessness. Sometimes the disclosure 
would cause quarrels between parties now at peace. 
Sometimes it would carry pain, such as you could not 
feel justified in carrying, into the mind of him who was 
its object. Sometimes, again, if right to be told, it might 
be difficult to prove. Thus, for one cause or another, 
some things are sacred, and some things are perilous, 
amongst any personal revelations that else you might 
have it in your power to make. And seldom, indeed, is 
your own silent retrospect of such connections altogether 
happy. "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons 
of princes," — this has been the warning, — this has 
been the farewell moral, winding up and pointing the 
experience of dying statesmen. Not less truly it might 
be said, " Put not your trust in the intellectual princes 
of your age: " form no connections too close with any 
who live only in the atmosphere of admiration and praise. 
The love or the friendship of such people rarely con- 
tracts itself into the narrow circle of individuals. You, 
if you are brilliant like themselves, they will hate ; you, 
if you are dull, they will despise. Gaze, therefore, ou 



ON WOKDSWOnTIl S POETRY. 7 

the splendor of such idols as a passing stranger. Look 
for a moment as one sharing in the idolatry ; but pass 
on before the splendor has been sullied by human frailty, 
or before your own generous homage has been con- 
founded with offerings of weeds. 

Safer, then, it is to scrutinize the works of eminent 
poets, than long to connect yourself with themselves, or 
to revive your remembrances of them in any personal 
record. Now, amongst all works that have illustrated 
our own age, none can more deserve an earnest notice 
than those of the Laureate ; and on some grounds, pecu- 
liar to themselves, none so much. Their merit in fact 
is not only supreme but unique ; not only supreme in 
their general class, but unique as in a class of their own. 
And there is a challenge of a separate nature to the 
curiosity of the readers, in the remarkable contrast 
between the first stage of Wordsworth's acceptation with 
the public and that which he enjoys at present. One 
original obstacle to the favorable impression of the 
Wordsworthian poetry, and an obstacle purely self- 
created, was his theory of poetic diction. The diction 
itself, without the theory, was of less consequence ; for 
the mass of readers would have been too blind or too 
careless to notice it. But the preface to the second 
edition of his Poems (2 vols. 1799-1800), compelled 
them to notice it. Nothing more injudicious was ever 
done by man. An unpopular truth would, at any rate, 
have been a bad inauguration, for what, on o^Aer accounts, 
the author had announced as "an experiment." His 
}>oetry was already an experiment as regarded the quality 
of the subjects selected, and as regarded the mode of 
treating them. That was surely trial enough for tlvi 



8 ON Wordsworth's poetry. 

reader's untrained sensibilities, without the unpopular 
truth besides, as to the diction. But, in the mean time, 
this truth, besides being unpopular, was also, in part, 
false : it was true, and it was not true. And it was not 
true in a double way. Stating broadly, and allowing it 
to be taken for his meaning, that the diction of ordinary 
life, in his own words, " the very language of man," was 
the proper diction for poetry, the writer meant no such 
thing ; for only a part of this diction, according to his 
own subsequent restriction, was available for such a use. 
And, secondly, as his own subsequent practice showed, 
even this part was available only for peculiar classes of 
poetry. In his own exquisite " Laodamia," in his " Son- 
nets," in his "Excursion," few are his obligations to the 
idiomatic language of life, as distinguished from that of 
books, or of prescriptive usage. Coleridge remarked, 
justly, that " The Excursion " bristles beyond most poems 
with what are called "dictionary" words; that is, poly- 
syllabic words of Latin or Greek origin. And so it 
must ever be, in meditative poetry upon solemn philo- 
sophic themes. The gamut of ideas needs a correspond- 
ing gamut of expressions ; the scale of the thinking, 
which ranges through every key, exacts, for the artist, 
an unlimited command over the entire scale of the 
instrument which he employs. Never, in fact, was there 
a more erroneous direction than that given by a modern 
rector of the Glasgow University to the students, — viz.^ 
that they should cultivate the Saxon part of our language, 
at the cost of the Latin part. Nonsense ! Both are 
indispensable ; and, speaking generally without stopping 
to distinguish as to subjects, both are equally indispens- 
able. Pathos, in situations which are homely, or at all 



ON WORDSWORTHS POETRY. V 

connected with domestic affections, naturally moves by 
Saxon words. Lyrical emotion of every kind, which 
(to merit the name of lyrical), must be in the state of 
flux and reflux, or, generally, of agitation, also requires 
the Saxon element of our language. And why ? Be- 
cause the Saxon is the aboriginal element; the basis, 
and not the superstructure : consequently it comprehends 
all the ideas which are natural to the heart of man and 
to the elementary situations of life. And, although the 
Latin often furnishes us with duplicates of these ideas, 
yet the Saxon or monosyllabic part has the advantage 
of precedency in our use and knowledge ; for it is the 
language of the nursery, whether for rich or poor, in 
which great philological academy no toleration is given 
to words in ^' osity" or ^^ ation." There is, therefore, a 
great advantage, as regards the consecration to our feel- 
ings, settled, by usage and custom, upon the Saxon 
strands, in the mixed yarn of our native tongue. And, 
universally, this may be remarked — that, wherever the 
passion of a poem is of that sort which uses, presumes, 
or postulates the ideas, without seeking to extend them, 
Saxon will be the " cocoon" (to speak by the language 
applied to silk-worms) which the poem spins for itself 
But, on the other hand, where the motion of the feeling 
is by and thro2igk the ideas, where (as in religious or 
meditative poetry — Young's for instance, or Cowper's) the 
pathos creeps and kindles underneath the very tissues of 
the thinking, there the Latin will predominate ; and so 
much so that, whilst the flesh, the blood and the muscle, 
will be often almost exclusively Latin, the articulations 
only, or hinges of connection, will be anglo-Saxon. 
But a blunder, more perhaps from thoughtlessness and 

1* 



ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 

careless reading, than from malice on the part of the 
professional critics, ought to have roused Wordsworth 
into a firmer feeling of the entire question These 
critics have fancied that, in Wordsworth'a estimate, 
whatsoever was plebeian was also poetically just in dic- 
tion ; not as though the impassioned phrase were some- 
times the vernacular phrase, but as though the vernacular 
phrase were universally the impassioned. They naturally 
went on to suggest, as a corollary, which Wordsworth 
could not refuse, that Dryden and Pope must be trans- 
lated into the flash diction of prisons and the slang of 
streets, before they could be regarded as poetically cos- 
tumed. Now, so far as these critics were concerned, 
the answer would have been — simply to say, that much 
in the poets mentioned, but especially of the racy Dry- 
den, actually is in that vernacular diction for which 
Wordsworth contended; and, for the other part, which 
is not, frequently it does require the very purgation, (if 
that were possible), which the critics were presuming to 
be so absurd. In Pope, and sometimes in Dryden, there 
is much of the unfeeling and the prescriptive slang which 
Wordsworth denounced. During the eighty years be- 
tween 1660 and 1740, grew up that scrofulous taint in 
our diction which was denounced by Wordsworth as 
technically " poetic language ; " and, if Dryden and Pope 
were less infected than others, this was merely because 
their understandings were finer. Much there is in both 
poets, as regards diction, which does require correction. 
And if, so far, the critics should resist Wordsworth's 
principle of reform, not he, but they, would have been 
found the patrons of deformity. This course would 
soon have turned the tables upon the critics. For the 



ON Wordsworth's poetry. 11 

poets, or the class of poets, whom they unwisely selected 
as models, susceptible of no correction, happen to be 
those who chiefly require it. But their foolish selection 
ought not to have intercepted or clouded the question 
when jmt in another shape, since in this shape it opena 
into a very troublesome dilemma. Spenser, Shakspeare, 
the Bible of 1610, and Milton, — how say you, William 
Wordsworth, — are these right and true as to diction, or 
are they not ? If you say they are, then what is it that 
you are proposing to change ? What room for a revolu- 
tion ? Would you, as Sancho says, have " better bread 
than is made of wheat ? " But if you say, no, they are 
not ; then, indeed, you open a fearful range to your owa 
artillery, but in a war greater than you could, appa 
rently, have contemplated. In the first case, that is, if 
the leading classics of the English literature are, in 
quality of diction and style, loyal to the canons of sound 
taste, then you cut away the loc7is standi for yourself as 
a reformer : the reformation applies only to secondary 
and recent abuses. In the second, if they also are 
faulty, you undertake an onus of hostility so vast that 
you will be found fighting against the stars. 

It is clear, therefore, that Wordsworth erred, and 
caused unnecessary embarrassment, equally to the attack 
and to the defence, by not assigning the names of the 
parties offended, whom he had specially contemplated. 
The bodies of the criminals should have been had into 
court. But much more he erred in another point, where 
his neglect cannot be thought of without astonishment. 
The whole appeal turned upon a comparison between 
two modes of phraseology; each of thef;e, the bad and 
the good, should have been extensively illustrated ; and, 



12 ON Wordsworth's poetry. 

until that IS done, the whole dispute is an aerial sublilty 
equally beyond the grasp of the best critic and the worst. 
How could a man so much in earnest, and so deeply 
interested in the question, commit so capital an over- 
sight ? Tantamne rem tarn negligenter ? The truth is, 
that, at this day, after a lapse of forty-seven years, and 
some discussion, the whole question moved by Wcrds- 
worth is still a res integra. And for this reason, that 
no sufficient specimen has ever been given of the par- 
ticular phraseology which each party contemplates as 
good or as bad : no man, in this dispute, steadily under- 
stands even himself; and, if he did, no other person 
understands him for want of distinct illustrations. Not 
only the answer, therefore, is still entirely in arrear, but 
even the question has not yet practically explained 
itself so as that an answer to it could be possible. 

Passing from the diction of Wordsworth's poetry to its 
matter, the least plausible objection ever brought against 
it was that of Mr. Hazlitt : " One would suppose," he 
said, " from the tenor of his subjects, that on this earth 
there was neither marrying nor giving in marriage." 
But as well might it be said of Aristophanes : " One 
would suppose, that in Athens no such thing had been 
known as sorrow and weeping." Or Wordsworth him- 
self might say reproachfully to some of Mr. Hazlitt's 
more favored poets ; " Judging by ymir themes, a man 
must believe that there is no such thing on our planet 
as fighting and kicking." Wordsworth has written many 
memorable poems (for instance, " On the Tyrolean and 
the Spanish Insurrections ; " " On the Retreat from Mos- 
cow;" "On the Feast, of Brougham Castle"), all sym- 
pathizing powerfully with the martial spirit. Otlier 



ON WORDSWORTH S POETRY, 



13 



poets, fiivoi-ites of Mr. Hazlitt, have never struck a 
solitary note from this Tyrtasan lyre ; and who blames 
thein? Surely, if every man finds his powers limited, 
every man would do well to respect this silent admoni- 
tion of nature, by not travelling out of his appointed 
walk, through any coxcombry of sporting a spurious 
versatility. And in this view, what Mr. Hazlitt made the 
reproach of the poet, is amongst the first of his praises 
Ikit there is another reason why Wordsworth could not 
meddle with festal raptures like the glory of a wedding- 
day. These raptures are not only too brief, but (which 
is worse) they tend downwards : even for as long as 
they last, they do not move upon an ascending scale. 
And even that is not their worst fault : they do not dif- 
fuse or conununicate themselves : the wretches chiefly 
interested in a marriage are so selfish, that they keep all 
the rapture to themselves. Mere joy, that does not 
linn-er and reproduce itself in reverberations or mirrors, 
is not fitted for poetry. What \vould the sun be itself, 
if it were a mere blank orb of fire that did not multiply 
its splendors through millions of rays refracted and 
reflected; or if its glory were not endlessly caught, 
splintered, and thrown back by atmospheric repercus- 
sions ? 

There is, besides, a still subtler reason (and one that 
ought not to have escaped the acuteness of Mr. Hazlitt), 
why the muse of Wordsworth could not glorify a wed- 
ding festival. Poems no longer than a sonnet he vnght 
derive from such an impulse : and one such poem of his 
there really is. Bat whosoever looks searchingly into 
the characteristic genius of Wordsworth, will see that he 
does not u illingly deal with a passion in its direct aspect, 



14 OIN W0RDS"\\"CKTII'S POETRY. 

or presenting an unmodified contour, but in forms more 
complex and oblique, and when passing under the shadow 
of some secondary passion. Joy, for instance, that wells 
up from constitutional sources, joy that is ebullient from 
youth to age, and cannot cease to sparkle, he yet exhib- 
its in the person of Matthew,^ the village schoolmaster, 
as touched and overgloomed by memories of sorrow. In 
the poem of " We are Seven," which brings into day for 
the first time a profound fact in the abysses of human 
nature, namely, that the mind of an infant catmot admit 
the idea of death, anymore than the fountain of light can 
comprehend the aboriginal darkness (a truth on which 
Mr. Ferrier has since commented beautifully in his 
" Philosophy of Consciousness ") ; the little mountaineer, 
who furnishes the text for this lovely strain, she whose 
fulness of life could not brook the gloomy faith in a 
grave, is yet (for the effect upon the reader) brought into 
connection with the reflex shadows of the grave : and 
if she herself has 7iot, the reader has, the gloom of that 
contemplation obliquely irradiated, as raised in relief 
upon his imagination, even by her. Death and its 
sunny antipole are forced into connection, I remember 
again to have heard a man complain, that in a little 
poem having for its very subject the universal diffusion 
and the gratuitous diffusion of joy — 

"Pleasure is sjjread through the earth. 
In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find," 

a picture occurs which overpowered him with melan- 
choly : it was this — 

1 See the exquisite poems, so little understood by the common- 
place reader, of The Tu>o April Mornings, and The Fountain. 



ON wordswokth's poetry. 15 

*' In sight of the spires 
All alive with the fires 
Of the sun going down to his rest, 
In the broad open eye of the solitary sky, 
They dance, — there ai-e three, as jocund as free, — 
While they dance on the calm river's breast."! 

Undeiii.'ibly there is (and without ground for complaint 
there is) even liere, where the spirit of gayety is pro- 
f(>ssedly invoked, an oblique though evanescent image 
flashed upon us of a sadness that lies deep behind the 
laughing figures, and of a solitude that is the real pos- 
sessor in fee of all things, but is waiting an hour or so 
for the dispossession of the false dancing tenants. 

An inverse case, as regards the three just cited, is 
found in the poem of ' Hart-leap-well,' over which the 
mysterious spirit of the noon-day. Pan, seems to brood. 
Out of suffering is there evoked the image of peace. 
Out of the cruel leap, and the agonizing race through 
thirteen hours ; out of the anguish in the perishing 
brute, and the headlong courage of his final despair, 

" Not unobserved by sympathy divine," — 

out of the ruined lodge and the forgotten mansion, 



1 Coleridge had a grievous infirmity of mind as regarded pain. 
ric could not contemplate the shadows of fear, of sorrow, of suffer- 
ing, with any steadiness of gaze. He was, in relation to that sub- 
ject, what in Lancashire they call nesh, i. e., soft, or effeminate. 
This frailty claimed indulgence, had he not erected it at times into 
a ground of superiority. Accordingly, I remember that he also 
complained of this passage in Wordsworth, and on the same 
ground, as being too overpowcringly depressing in the fourth line, 
when modified by the other five 



16 ON Wordsworth's poetry. 

bowers that are trodden under foot, and pleasure-houses 
that are dust, the poet calls up a vision of palingenesis ; 
he interposes his solemn images of suffering, of decay, 
and ruin, only as a visionary haze through which gleams 
transpire of a trembling dawn far off, but surely on the 
road. 

" The pleasure-bouse is dust : behind, before. 

This is no common waste, no common gloom ; 
But Nature in due course of time once moi'e 
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom. 

She leaves these objects to a slow decay. 

That what we are, and have been, may be known 

But, at the coming of the milder day, 

These monuments shall all be overgrown." 

This influx of the joyous into the sad, and the sad into 
the joyous, this reciprocal entanglement of darkness in 
light, and of light in darkness, offers a subject too occult 
for popular criticism ; but merely to have suggested it, 
may be sufficient to account for Wordsworth not having 
chosen a theme of pure garish sunshine, such as the 
hurry of a wedding-day, so long as others, more pictu- 
resque or more plastic, were to be had. A wedding-day 
is, in many a life, the sunniest of its days. But unless 
it is overcast with some event more tragic than could be 
wished, its uniformity of blaze, without shade or relief, 
makes it insipid to the mere bystander. Accordingly, 
all epithalamia seem to have been written under the 
inspiration of a bank-note. 

Far beyond these causes of repulsiveness to ordinary 
readers was the class of subjects selected, and the mode 
of treating them. The earliest line of readers, the van 



oisi Wordsworth's poetry. 17 

m point ol' time, always includes a majority of the 
youngs, the commonplace, and the unimpassioned. Sub- 
sequently, these are sifted and winnowed, as the rear 
ranlis come forward in succession. But at first it was 
sure to ruin any poems, that the situations treated are 
not those which reproduce to the fancy of readers their 
own hopes and prospects. The meditative are interested 
by all that has an interest for human nature. But what 
cares a young lady, dreaming of lovers kneeling at hei 
feet, for the agitations of a n'lother forced into resigning 
her child ? or of a shepherd at eighty parting forever 
amongst mountain solitudes with an only son of seven- 
teen, innocent and hopeful, whom soon afterwards the 
guilty town seduces into ruin irreparable ? Romances 
and novels in verse constitute the poetry which is 
immediately successful ; and that is a poetry, it may be 
added, which, after one generation, is unsuccessful for- 
ever. 

But this theme is too extensive. Let us pass to the 
separate works of Wordsworth ; and, in deference to 
the opinion of the world, let us begin with " The Excur- 
sion." This poem, as regards its opening, seems to 
require a recast. The inaugurating story of Margaret 
is in a wrong key, and rests upon a false basis. It is a 
case of sorrow from desertion. So at least it is repre- 
sented. Margaret loses, in losing her husband, the one 
sole friend of her heart. And the wanderer, who is the 
presiding philosopher of the poem, in retracing her story, 
sees nothing in the case but a wasting away through 
sorrow, at once natural in its kind, and preternatural in 
its degree. 

Tliere is a story somewhere told of a man who com- 
2 



18 ON Wordsworth's poetry. 

plained, and his friends complained, that his face looktd 
almost always dirty. The man explained this strange 
affection out of a mysterious idiosyncrasy in the face 
Itself, upon which the atmosphere so acted as to force 
out stains or masses of gloomy suffusion, just as it does 
upon some qualities of stone in vapory weather. But, 
said his friend, had you no advice for this strange affec- 
tion ? yes : surgeons had prescribed ; chemistry had 
exhausted its secrets upon the case ; magnetism had 
done its best ; electricity had done its worst. His friend 
mused for some time, and then asked : " Pray, amongst 
these painful experiments, did it ever happen to you to 
try one that I have read of, namely, a basin of soap and 
water ? " And perhaps, on the same principle, it might 
be allowable to ask the philosophic wanderer, who 
washes the case of Margaret with so many coats of 
metaphysical varnish, but ends with finding all unavail- 
ing, " Pray, amongst your other experiments, did you 
ever try the effect of a guinea?" Supposing this, 
however, to be a remedy beyond his fortitude, at least 
he might have offered a little rational advice, which costs 
no more than civility. Let us look steadily at the case. 
The particular calamity under which Margaret groaned 
was the loss of her husband, who had enlisted. There 
is something, even on the husband's part, in this enlist- 
ment, to which the reader can hardly extend his coi:n- 
passion. The man had not gone off, it is true, as a 
heartless deserter of his family, or in profligate quest of 
pleasure : cheerfully he would have stayed and vvorktd, 
had trade been good ; but, as it was 7iot, he found it 
impossible to support the spectacle of domestic suffering : 
ae takes the bounty of a recruiting sergeant, and off he 



ON WORDbWORIH's POETRY. 19 

murchcs with his regiment. Nobody reaches the sura- 
niit of heartlessiiess at once; and, accordingly, iti this 
early stage of his desertion, we are not surprised to find, 
that part (but what part ?) of the bounty had been 
silently conveyed to his wife. So far we are barely not 
indignant; but as time wears on we become highly so; 
for no letter does he ever send to his poor, forsaken part- 
ner, either of tender excuse, or of encouraging prospects. 
Yet, if he had done this, still we must condemn him. 
Millions have supported (and supported without praise 
or knowledge of man) that trial from which he so 
weakly fled. Even in this, and going no further, he 
was a voluptuary. Millions have heard and acknowl- 
edged, as a secret call from Heaven, the summons, not 
only to take their own share of household suffering, as a 
mere sacrifice to the spirit of manliness, but also to 
stand the far sterner trial of witnessing the same priva- 
tions in a wife and little children. To evade this, to 
slip his neck out of the yoke, when God summons a poor 
man to such a trial, is the worst form of cowardice. 
And Margaret's husband, by adding to this cowardice 
subsequently an entire neglect of his family, not so much 
as intimating the destination of the regiment, forfeits his 
last hold upon our lingering sympathy. But with him, 
It will be said, the poet has not connected the leading 
thread of the interest. Certainly not ; though in some 
degree by a reaction from his character depends the re- 
spectability of Margaret's grief. And it is impossible to 
turn away from his case entirely, because from the set 
of the enlistment is derived the whole movement of 
the story. Here it is that we must tax the wandering 
philosopher with treason. He found ro luxurious a 



20 ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 

pleasure in contemplating a pathetic phthisis of heart in 
the abandoned wife, that the one obvious counsel in her 
particular distress which dotage could not have over- 
looked he suppresses. And yet this in the revolution 
of a week would have brought her effectual relief. 
Surely the regiment, into which her husband had enlisted, 
bore some number: it was the king's "dirty half-hun- 
dred " — or the rifle brigade — or some corps known to 
men and the Horse Guards. Instead, therefore, of 
suffering poor Margaret to loiter at a gate, looking for 
answers to her questions from vagrant horsemen, — a 
process which reminds one of a sight, sometimes extort- 
ing at once smiles and deep pity, in the crowded 
thoroughfares of London, namely, a little child inno- 
cently asking with tearful eyes from strangers for the 
mother whom it has lost in that vast wilderness, — the 
wanderer should at once have inquired for the station 
of that detachment which had enlisted him. This rmist 
have been in the neighborhood. Here he would have 
obtained all the particulars. That same night he would 
have written to the War-Office ; and in a very few days, 
an official answer, bearing the indorsement. On H. M.'s 
Service, would have placed Margaret in communication 
with the truant. To have overlooked a point of policy 
so broadly apparent as this, vitiates and nullifies the 
very basis of the story. Even for a romance it will not 
do ; far less for a philosophic poem dealing with intense 
realities. No such case of distress could have lived for 
one fortnight, nor have survived a single interview with 
the rector, the curate, the parish-clerk, with the school- 
master, the doctor, the attorney, the innkeeper, or the 
exciseman. 



ON WORDSWOKTH'S TOETRY. 21 

But, apart from the vicious mechanism of the inci- 
dents, the story is even more objectionable by the doubt- 
ful quality of the leading character from which it derives 
its pathos. Had any one of us readers held the office 
of coroner in her neighborhood, he would have found it 
his duty to hold an inquest upon the body of her infant. 
This child, as every reader could depose {now when the 
details have been published by the poet), died of neglect ; 
not through direct cruelty, but through criminal self- 
indulgence. Self-indulgence in what ? Not in liquor, 
yet not altogether in fretting. Sloth, and the habit of 
gadding abroad, were most in fault. The wanderer 
himself might have been called as a witness for the 
crown, to prove that the infant was left to sleep in soli- 
tude for hours : the key even was taken away, as if to 
intercept the possibility (except through burglary) of 
those tender attentions from some casual stranger, which 
the unfeeling mother had withdrawn. The child abso- 
lutely awoke whilst the philosopher was listening at the 
door. It cried ; but finally hushed itself to sleep, That 
looks like a case of Dalby's carminative. But this crisis 
could not have been relied on : tragical catastrophes 
arise from neglected crying ; ruptures in the first place, 
a very common result in infants ; rolling out of bed fol- 
lowed by dislocation of the neck ; fits, and other short 
cuts to death. It is hardly any praise to Margaret that 
she carried the child to that consummation by a more 
ingering road. 

This first tale, therefore, must and \^i^, if Mr. 
Wordsworth retains energy for such recasts of a labo- 
rious work, bo cut away from its connection with " The 
Excursion." This is the more to be expected from a 



22 ON vvoudsworth's poetry. 

poet aware of his own importance and anxious. for the 
perfection of his works, because nothing in the following 
books depends upon this narrative. No timbers or main 
beams need to be sawed away ; it is but a bolt that is to be 
slipped, a rivet to be unscrewed. And yet, on the other 
hand, if the connection is slight, the injury is great; for 
we all complain heavily of entering a temple dediccted 
to new combinations of truth through a vestibule of 
falsehood. And the falsehood is double ; falsehood in 
the adjustment of the details (however separately possi- 
ble), falsehood in the character which, wearing the mask 
of profound sentiment, does apparently repose upon dys- 
pepsy and sloth. 

Far different in value and in principle of composition 
is the next tale in " The Excursion." This occupies the 
fourth book, and is the impassioned record from the 
infidel solitary of those heart-shaking chapters in his 
own life which had made him what the reader finds him. 
Once he had not been a solitary ; once he had not been 
an infidel ; now he is both. He lives in a little, urn-like 
valley (a closet-recess from Little Langdale by the de- 
scription), amongst the homely household of a yeoman : 
he is become a bitter cynic ; and not against man alone, 
or society alone, but against the laws of hope or fear, 
upon which both repose. If he endures the society 
with which he is now connected, it is because, being 
dull, that society is of few words ; it is because, beinr 
tied to hard labor, that society goes early to bed, and 
packs up its dulness at eight, p. m., in blankets ; it is. 
because, under the acute inflictions of Sunday, or the 
chronic inflictions of the Christmas holidays, that dull 
society is easily laid into a magnetic sleep by three 



ON WORDSWORTH'S POETKV. 23 

passes of metaphysical philosophy. The narrative of 
this misanthrope is grand and impassioned ; not creeping 
by details and minute touches, but rolling through capital 
events, and uttering its pathos through great representa- 
tive abstractions. Nothing can be finer than when, upon 
the desolation of his household, upon the utter emptying 
of his domestic chambers by the successive deaths of 
children and youthful wife, just at that moment the 
mighty phantom of the French Revolution rises solemnly 
above the horizon ; even then new earth and new 
heavens are promised to human nature ; and suddenly 
the solitary man, translated by the frenzy of human 
grief into the frenzy of supernatural hopes, adopts these 
radiant visions for the darlings whom he has lost — 

"Society becomes his glittering bride, 
And airy liopes bis children." 

Yet it is a misfortune in the fate of this fine tragic 
movement, rather than its structure, that it tends to col- 
lapse : the latter strains, colored deeply by disappoint- 
ment, do not correspond with the grandeur of the first. 
And the hero of the record becomes even more painfully 
a contrast to himself than the tenor of the incidents to 
their earlier tenor. Sneering and querul'ous comments 
upon so broad a field as human folly, make poor com- 
pensation for the magnificence of youthful enthusiasm. 
But may not this defect be redressed in a future section 
of the poem ? It is probable, from a hint dropped by 
the author, that one collateral object of the philosophical 
discu^.:ions is — the reconversion of the splenetic infidel 
to his ancient creed in some higher form, and to his 
ancient temper of benignant hope : in which case, what 



SJ4 ON Wordsworth's POETRy. 

now we feel to be a cheerless depression, will sweep 
round into a noble reascent — quite on a level with the 
aspirations of youth, and differing, not in degree, but 
only in quality of enthusiasm. Yet, if this is the poet's 
plan, it seems to rest upon a misconception. For how 
should the sneering sceptic, who has actually found 
solace in Voltaire's " Candide," be restored to the benig- 
nities of faith and hope by argument ? It was not in 
this way that he lost his station amongst Christian 
believers. No false philosophy it had been which 
wrecked his Christian spirit of hope ; but, on the con- 
trary, his bankruptcy in hope which wrecked his Chris- 
tian philosophy. Here, therefore, the poet will certainly 
find himself in an " almighty fix; " because any possible 
treatment, which could restore the solitary's former self, 
such as a course of sea-bathing, could not interest the 
reader ; and reversely, any successful treatment through 
argument that could interest the philosophic reader 
would not, under the circumstances, seem a plausible 
restoration for the case. 

What is it that has made the recluse a sceptic ? Is it 
the reading of bad books ? In that case he may be re- 
claimed by the arguments of those who have read better. 
But not at all. He has become the unbelieving cynic 
that he is, 1st, through his own domestic calamities 
predisposing him to gloomy views of human nature ; 
and, 2dly, through the overclouding of his high-toned 
expectations from the French Revolution, which has dis- 
posed him, in a spirit of revenge for his own disappoint- 
ment, to contemptuous views of human nature. Now, 
surely the dejection which supports his gloom, and the 
despondency which supports his contempt, are not of a 



ON Wordsworth's poetry. 25 

nature to give way before philosophic reasonings. Make 
him happy by restoring what he has lost, and his genial 
philosophy will return of itself. Make him triumphant 
by realizing what had seemed to him the golden promises 
of the French Revolution, and his political creed will 
moult her sickly feathers. Do this, and he is still young 
enough for hope ; but less than this restoration of his 
morning visions will not call back again his morning 
happiness ; and breaking spears with him in logical 
tournaments will mend neither his hopes nor his temper. 
Indirectly, besides, it ought not to be overlooked, that, 
as respects the French Revolution, the whole college of 
philosophy in " The Excursion," who are gathered 
together upon the case of the recluse, make the same 
mistake that he makes. Whj'- is the recluse disgusted with 
the French Revolution ? Because it had not fulfilled 
many of his expectations ; and, of those which it had 
fulfilled, some had soon been darkened by reverses. 
But really this was childish impatience. If a man 
depends for the exuberance of his harvest upon the 
splendor of the coming summer, you do not excuse him 
for taking prussic acid because it rains cats and dogs 
through the first ten days of April. All in good time, 
we say ; take it easy ; make acquaintance with May and 
June before you do anything rash. The French Revo- 
lution has not, even yet [1845], come into full action. 
It was the explosion of a prodigious volcano, which 
scattered its lava over every kingdom of every continent, 
everywhere silently manuring them for social struggles ; 
this lava is gradually fertilizing all ; the revolutionary 
movement is moving onwards at this hour as inexorably 
as ever. Listen, if you have ears for such spiritual 



26 ON Wordsworth's poetry. 

sounds, to the mighty tide even now slowly coming up 
from the sea to Milan, to Rome, to Naples, to Vienna. 
Hearken to the gentle undulations already breaking 
against the steps of that golden throne which stretchers 
from St. Petersburgh to Astrachau; — tremble at the 
hurricanes which have long been mustering about the 
pavilions of the Ottoman Padishah. All these are long 
swells setting in from the French Revolution. Even as 
regards France herself, that which gave the mortal 
offence to the sympathies of the solitary was the Reign 
of Terror. But how thoughtless to measure the cycles 
of vast national revolutions by metres that would not 
stretch round an ordinary human passion ! Even to a 
frail sweetheart you would grant more indulgence thaa 
to be off in a pet because some transitory cloud arose 
between you. The Reign of Terror was a mere fleeting 
phasis. The Napoleon dynasty was nothing more. Even 
that scourge, which was supposed by many to have mas- 
tered the Revolution, has itself passed away upon the wind, 
■ — leaving no wreck, relic, or record behind, except pre- 
cisely those changes which it worked, not as an enemy to 
the Revolution (which also it was), but as its servaiit and 
its tool. See, even whilst we speak, the folly of that 
cynical sceptic who would not allow time for great 
natural processes of purification to travel onwards to 
their birth, or wait for the evolution of natural results ; 
— the storm that shocked him has wheeled away ; — 
the frost and the hail that offended him have done their 
office;.; — the rain is over and gone; — happier days 
have descended upon France ; — the voice of the turtle 
is heard in all her forests ; — man walks with his head 
erect ; — bastiles are no more ; — every cottage is 



ON VVOKDSWOUTUS rOETRy. 2 

searched by the golden light of law ; and the privileges 
of conscience are consecrated forever. 

Here, then, the poet himself, the philosophic wanderei, 
the learned vicar, are all equally in fault with the solitary 
sceptic ; for they all agree in treating his disappointment 
as sound and reasonable in itself; but blamable only in 
relation to those exalted hopes which he never ought to 
have encouraged. Right (they say), to consider the 
French Revolution, now, as a failure ; but Tiot right 
originally, to have expected that it should succeed. 
Whereas, in fact, it has succeeded ; it is propagating its 
life; it is travelling on to new births — conquering, and 
yet to conquer. 

It is not easy to see, therefore, how the Laureate can 
avoid making some change in the constitution of his 
poem, were it only to rescue his philosophers, and, 
therefore, his own philosophy, from the imputation of 
precipitancy in judgment. They charge the sceptic with 
rash judgment a parte ante ; and, meantime, they them- 
selves are more liable to that charge a parte post. If he, 
at the tirst, hoped too much (which is not clear, but only 
that he hoped too impatiently), they afterwards recant 
too blindly. And this error they will not, themselves, 
fail to acknowledge, as soon as theyaAvaken to the truth, 
that the Revolution did not close on the 18th Brumaire, 
1790, at which time it was only arrested or suspended, 
in one direction, by military shackles, but is still mining 
under ground, like the ghost in Hamlet, through every 
quarter of the globe. ^ 

' The reader must not understand the writer as unconditionally 
approving of the French Revolution. It is his belief that the 



28 ON Wordsworth's poetry. 

In paying so much attention to " Tlie Excursion ' 
(of which, in a more extended notice, the two boolca 
"entitled, " The Churchyard amongst the Mountains,' 
would have claimed the profoundest attention), we yielo 
less to our own opinion than to that of the public. Or, 
perhaps, it is not so much the public as the vulgar 
opinion, governed entirely by the consideration that 
" The Excursion " is very much the longest poem of its 
author; and, secondly, that it bears currently the title 
of a philosophic poem ; on which account it is presumed 
to have a higher dignity. The big name and the big 
size are allowed to settle its rank. But in this there is 
much delusion. In the very scheme and movement of 
" The Excursion " there are two defects which interfere 
greatly with its power to act upon the mind as a whole, 
or with any effect of unity ; so that, infallibly it will be 
read, by future generations, in parts and fragments ; 
and, being thus virtually dismembered into many small 
poems, it will scarcely justify men in allowing it the 
rank of a long one. One of these defects is the undula- 
tory character of the course pursued by the poem, which 

resistance to the revolution was, in many high quarters, a sacred 
duty ; and that this resistance it was which forced out, from the 
Revolution itself, the benefits which it has since diffused. To speak 
by the language of mechanics, the case was one which illustrated 
the composition of forces. Neither the Revolution singly, nor the 
resistance to the Revolution singly, was calculated to regenerate 
social man. But the two forces in union — where the one modified, 
mitigated, or even neutralized the other, at times, and where, at 
times, each entered into a happy combination with the other, 
— yielded for the world those benefits which, by its sepai-ate ten- 
dency, either of the two was fitted to stifle. 



ON WOKUSWOliTU'S POETRY. 29 

does not ascend uniformly, or even keep one steady 
level, but trespasses, as if by forgetfulness, or chance, 
into topics furnishing little inspiration, and not always 
closely connected with the presiding theme. In part this 
arises from the accident that a slight tissue of narrative 
connects the different sections ; and to this the movement 
of the narrative, the fluctuations of the speculative 
themes, are in part obedient: the succession of the inci- 
dents becomes a law for the succession of the thoughts, 
as oftentimes it happens that these incidents are the 
proximate occasions of the thoughts.- Yet, as the narra- 
tive is not of a nature to be moulded by any determinate 
piinciple of coercing passion, but bends easily to the ca 
prices of chance and the moment, unavoidably it stamps, 
by reaction, a desultory or even incoherent character 
\ipon the train of the philosophic discussions. You 
know not what is coming next; and, when it does come, 
you do not always know why it comes. This has the 
effect of crumbling the poem into separate segments, 
and causes the whole (when looked at as a whole) to 
appear a rope of sand. A second defect lies in the col- 
loquial form which the poem sometimes assumes. It is 
arvngerous to conduct a philosophic discussion hy talJdng. 
If the nature of the argument could be supposed to roll 
through logical quillets, or metaphysical conundrums, so 
that, on putting forward a problem, the interlocutor 
could bring matters to a crisis, by saying, " Do you give 
it up ? " — in that case there might be a smart reciproca- 
tion of dialogue, of swearing and denying, giving and 
taking, butting, rebutting, and "surrebutting;"^ and 

1 " Surrebutting : " this is not, directly, a term from Aristotle's 



30 ON Wordsworth's poetry. 

thii: would confer nu interlocutory or amcebcean character 
upon the process of altercation. But the topics, and the 
quality of the arguments being moral, in which always 
the reconciliation of the feelings is to be secured by 
gradual persuasion, rather thaii the understanding to be 
floored by a solitary blow, inevitably it becomes impos- 
sible that anything of this brilliant conversational sword- 
play, cut-and-thrust, " carte " and" tierce," can make for 
itself an opening. Mere decorum requires that the 
speakers should be prosy. And you yourself, though 
sometimes disposed to say, " Do now, dear old soul, cut 
it short," are sensible that he cannot cut it short. Dis- 
quisitions, in a certain key, can no more turn round 
upon a sixpence than a coach-and-six. They must have 
sea-room to " wear " ship, and to tack. This in itself is 
often tedious ; but it leads to a worse tediousness : a 
practised eye sees from afar the whole evolution of the 
coming argument ; and then, besides the pain of hearing 
the parties preach, you hear them preach from a text 
which already in germ had warned you of all the buds 
and blossoms which it was laboriously to produce. And 
this second blemish, unavoidable if the method of dia- 
logue is adopted, becomes more painfully apparent 
through a third, almost inalienable from the natural 
constitution of' the subjects concerned. It is, that in 
cases where a large interest of human nature is treated, 
such as the position of man in this world, his duties, his 
difficulties, many parts become necessary as transitiona. 



mint, but indirectly it is ; for it belongs to the old science of 
" special pleading," which, in part, is an oflFset from the Aristcte 
lian logic. 



ON Wordsworth's poetry. 31 

oT connecting links, which, per se, are not attractive, nor 
can by any art be made so. Treating the whole theme 
in extenso, the poet is driven, by natural corollary, or by 
objections too obvious to be evaded, into discussions not 
chcsen by his own taste, but dictated by the logic or 
the tendencies of the question, and by the impossibility 
of dismissing with partiality any one branch of a subject 
which is essential to the integrity of the speculation, 
simply because it is at war with the brilliancy of its 
development. 

Not, therefore, in " The Excursion " must we look 
for that reversionary influence which awaits Words- 
worth with posterity. It is the vulgar superstition in 
behalf of big books and sounding titles ; it is the Aveak- 
ness of supposing no book entitled to be considered a 
power in the literature of the land, unless physically it 
is weighty, that must have prevailed upon Coleridge 
and others to undervalue, by comparison with the direct 
philosophic .poetry of Wordsworth, those earlier poems 
which are all short, but generally scintillating with 
gems of far profounder truth. Let the reader under- 
stand, however, that, by "truth," I understand, not 
merely that truth which takes the shape of a formal 
proposition, reducible to " mood " and " figure," but 
truth which suddenly strengthens into solemnity an im- 
pression very feebly acknowledged previously, or truth 
which suddenly unveils a connection between objects 
aivvays before regarded as irrelate and independent. In 
astronomy, to gain the rank of discoverer, ii is not 
required that you should reveal a star absolutely new ; 
find out with respect to an old star some new affection — 
T*. for instance, that it has an ascertainable parallax — ■ 



32 ON w JE dsworth's poetry. 

and immediately you bring it within the verge of a 
human interest ; or of some old familiar planet, that its 
satellites suffer periodical eclipses, and immediately you 
bring it within the verge of terrestrial uses. Gleams of 
steadier vision, that brighten into certainty appearances else 
doubtful, or that unfold relations else unsuspected, are 
not less discoveries of truth than the revelations of the 
telescope, or the conquests of the diving-bell. It is 
astonishing how large a harvest of new truths would be 
reaped, simply through the accident of a man's feeling, 
or being made to feel, more deeply than other men. He 
sees the same objects, neither more nor fewer, but he 
sees them engraved in lines far stronger and more deter- 
minate ; and the difference in the strength makes the 
whole difference between consciousness and sub-con 
sciousness. And in questions of the mere understanding, 
we see the same fact illustrated : the author who rivets 
notice the most, is not he that perplexes men by truths 
drawn from fountains of absolute novelty, — truths un- 
sunned as yet, and obscure from that cause ; but he that 
awakens into illuminated consciousness old lineaments of 
truth long slumbering in the mind, although too faint to 
nave extorted attention. Wordsworth has brought many 
a truth into life, both for the eye and for the understand 
ing, which previously had slumbered indistinctly for al' 
men. 

For instance, as respects the eye, who does not ac 
knowledge instantaneously the strength of reality in 
that saying upon a cataract seen from a station two 
miles off, that it was " frozen by distance " ? In all 
nature there is not an object so essentially at war with 
the stiffening of frost, as the headlong and desperate life 



ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 33 

of a cataract ; and yet notoriously the effect of distance 
is to lock up this frenzy of motion into the most petritic 
column of stillness. This effect is perceived at once 
when pointed out; but how few are the eyes that ever 
would have perceived it for themselves ! Twilight, 
again, — who before Wordsworth ever distinctly noticed 
its abstracting power ? — that power of removing, soften- 
ing, harmonizing, by which a mode of obscurity executes 
for the eye the same mysterious office which the mind so 
often within its own shadowy realms executes for itself. 
In the dim interspace between day and night, all disap- 
pears from our earthly scenery, as if touched by an 
enchanter's rod, which is either mean or inharmonious, 
or unquiet, or expressive of temporary things. Leaning 
a^jtiinst a column of rock, looking down upon a lake or 
river, and at intervals carrying your eyes forward 
through a vista of mountains, you become aware that 
your sight rests upon the very same spectacle, unaltered 
in a single feature, which once at the same hour was 
beheld by the legionary Eoman from his embattled 
camp, or by the roving Briton in his " wolf-skin vest,' 
lying down to sleep, and looking 

" through some leafy bower, 



Before his eyes were closed." 

How magnificent is the summary or abstraction of 
tKj elementary features in such a scene, as executed 
b)'' the poet himself, in illustration of this abstraction 
daily executed by nature, through her handmaid Twi- 
light ! Listen, reader, to the closing stram, solemn as 
3 2^ 



34 



ON WORDSWORTH S rOETRV. 



twilight is solemn, and grand as the spectacle which it 
describes : — 

" By him [/. e., the roving Briton] was seen, 
The self-same vision vyhich we now beliold. 
At thy meek bidding, sliadowy Power, brought forth, 
These mighty bai'riei's, and the gulf between ; 
The floods, the stars, — a spectacle as old 
■As the beginning of the heavens and earth." 

Another great field there is amongst the pomps of 
nature, which, if Wordsworth did not first notice, he 
certainly has noticed most circumstantially. I speak of 
cloud-scenery, or those pageants of sky-built architecture, 
which sometimes in summer, at noon-day, and in all sea- 
sons about sunset, arrest or appal the meditative ; " per- 
plexing monarohs " with the spectacle of armies ma- 
noeuvring, or deepening the solemnity of evening by 
towering edifices that mimic — but which also in mimick- 
ing mock — the transitory grandeurs of man. It is 
singular that these gorgeous phenomena, not less than 
those of the Aurora Borealis, have been so little noticed 
by poets. The Aiirora was naturally neglected by the 
soutliern poets of Greece and Rome, as not much seen in 
their latitudes. ^ But the cloud-architecture of the day- 

iBut then, says the reader, why is it not proportionably the 
more noticed by poets of the north ? Certainly, that question ia 
fair. And the answer, it is scarcely possible to doubt, is this : — 
That until the rise of Natural Philosophy, in Charles the Second's 
reign, there was no -name for the appearance ; on which account, 
some writers have been absurd enough to believe that the Aurora 
did not exist, noticeably, until about 1690. Shalispeare. in his 
journey down to Stratford (always performed on horseback), must 
crten have been belated : he must sometimes have seen, he could 
not but have admired, the fiery skirmishes of the Aurora. And 



ON wokusworth's poetry. 35 

jght belongs alike to north and south. Accordingly, 1 
remember one notice of it in Hesiod, a case were the 
clouds exhibited 

•' The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest." 

Another there is, a thousand years later, in Lucan : 
amongst the portents which prefigured the dreadfu. con- 
vukions destined to shake the earth at Pharsalia, is 
noticed by him some fiery coruscation of arms in the 
heavens ; but, so far as I recollect, the appearances might 
have belonged equally to the workmanship of the clouds 
or the Aurora. Up and down the next eight hundred 
years are scattered evanescent allusions to these vapory 
appearances ; in Hamlet and elsewhere occur gleams of 
such allusions; but I remember no distinct picture of 
one before that in the " Antony and Cleopatra " of 
Shakspeare, beginning, 

" Sometimes we see a cloud that 's dragonish." 

Subsequently to Shakspeare, these notices, as of all 
phenomena whatsoever that demanded a familiarity with 
nature in the spirit of love, became rarer and rarer. At 
length, as the eighteenth century was winding up its 
accounts, forth stepped William Wordsworth, of whom, 
as a reader of all pages in nature, it may be said that, 
if we except Dampier, the admirable buccaneer, and 
some few professional naturalists, he first and he .ast 
looked at natural objects with the eye that neither will 
be dazzled from without nor cheated by preconceptions 
from within. Most men look at nature in the hurry of 

yet, for want of a word to fix and identify the object, how could 
he introduce it as an image or allusion in his writings ' 



36 o.< Wordsworth's poetry. 

a confusion that distinguishes nothing; their error is 
from without. Pope, again, and many who live in 
towns,^ make such blunders as that of supposing the 
moon to tip with silver the hills behind which she is ris- 
ing, not by erroneous use of their eyes (for they use 
them not at all), but by inveterate preconceptions. 
Scarcely has there been a poet with what could be called 
a learned eye, or an eye exteiisively learned, before 
Wordsworth, Much affectation there has been of that 
sort since his rise, and at all times much counterfeit 
enthusiasm ; but the sum of the matter is this, that 
Wordsworth had his passion for nature fixed in his blood ; 
— it was a necessity, like that of the mulberry-leaf to 
the silk-v/orm ; and through his commerce with nature 
did he live and breathe. Hence it was, namely, from the 
truth of his love, that his knowledge grew ; whilst most 
others, being merely hypocrites in their love, have 
turned out merely charlatans in their knowledge. This 
chapter, therefore, of sky scenery, may be said to have 
been revivified amongst the resources of poetry by 
Wordsworth — rekindled, if not absolutely kindled. 
The sublime scene endorsed upon the draperies of the 
storm in " The Excursion," — that witnessed upon the 
passage of the Hamilton Hills in Yorkshire, — the 

1 It was not, however, that all poets then lived in towns ; neither 
had Pope himself generally lived in towns. But it is perfectly 
useless to be familiar with nature unless there is a public trained 
to love and value nature. It is not what the individual sees that 
will fix itself as beautiful in his recollections, bwt what he sees 
under a consciousness that others will sympathize with his feelings. 
Under any other circumstances familiarity does but realize the 
adage, and " breeds contempt." The great despis<^rs of rural 
scenery are rustics. 



ON Wordsworth's poetry. ST 

solemn " sky prospect " from the fields of France, aru 
unrivalled in that order of composition ; and in one of 
these records Wordsworth has given first of all the true 
key-note of the sentiment belonging to these grand 
pageants. They are, says the poet, speaking in a case 
where the appearance had occurred towards night, 

" Meek nature's evening comment on the shows 
And iJl tlxe fuming vanities of eai'th " 

V^es, that IS the secret moral whispered to the mind. 
These mimicries express the laughter which is in heaven 
it earthly pomps. Frail and vapory are the glories of 
man, even as the parodies of those glories are frail 
which nature weaves in clouds. 

As another of those natural appearances which must 
have haunted men's eyes since the Flood, but yet had 
never forced itself into conscious notice until arrested by 
Wordsworth, I may notice an effect of iteration daily 
exhibited in the habits of cattle : — 

" The cattle are grazing, 
Their heads never raising ; 
Tliereare forty feeding like one." 

Now, merely as a fact, and if it were nothing more, this 
characteristic appearance in the habits of cows, when all 
repeat the action of each, ought not to have been over- 
looked by those who profess themselves engaged in 
holding up a mirror to nature. But the fact has also a 
profound meaning as a hieroglyphic. In all animals 
which live under the protection of man a life of peace 
and quietness, but do not share in his labors or in his 
pleasures, what we regard is the species, and not the 



3S ON WORDSWORTH S I'UETRY. 

individual. Nobody but a grazier ever looks at one cow 
amongst a field of cows, or at one sheep in a flock. Put 
as to those animals which are more closely connected 
with man, not passively connected, but actively, bemg 
partners in his toils and perils and recreations, such as 
horses, dogs, falcons, they are regarded as individuals, and 
are allowed the benefit of an individual interest. It is not 
that cows have not a differential character, each for her- 
self ; and sheep, it is well known, have all a separate 
physiognomy for the shepherd who has cultivated their 
acquaintance. But men generally have no opportunity 
or motive for studying the individualities of creatures, 
however otherwise respectable, that are too much re- 
garded by all of us in the reversionary light of milk, and 
beef, and mutton. Far otherwise it is with horses, who 
share in man's martial risks, who sympathize with man's 
frenzy in hunting, who divide with man the burdens of 
noonday. Far otherwise it is with dogs, that share the 
hearths of man, and adore the footsteps of his children. 
These man loves; of these he makes dear, though hum- 
ble friends. These often fight for him ; and for them he 
he will sometimes fight. Of necessity, therefore, every 
horse and every dog is an individual — has a sort of 
personality that makes him separately interesting — has 
a boauty and a character of his own. Go to Melton, 
therefore, and what will you see ? Every man, every 
horse, every dog, glorying in the plentitude of life, is in 
a different attitude, motion, gesture, action. It is not 
there the sublime unity which you must seek, where 
forty are like one ; but the sublime infinity, like that of 
ocean, like that of Flora, like that of nature, where nc 



ON WORDSWORTH S POETRY. 39 

repetitions are endured, no leaf the copy of another leaf, 
no absolute identity, and no painful tautologies. This 
subject might be pursued into profounder recesses ; but 
in a popular discussion it is necessary to forbear. 

A volume might be filled with such glimpses of 
novelty as Wordsworth has first laid bare, even to the 
apprehension of the senses. For the widerstanding, 
when moving in the same track of human sensibi/ities, 
he has done only not so much. How often to give 
an instance or two) must the human heart have felt 
that there are sorrows which descend far belovv the 
region in which tears gather; and yet who has ever 
given utterance to this feeling until Wordsworth came 
with his immortal line — 

" Tboughts that do often lie too deep for tears " ? 

This sentiment, and others that might be adduced 
(such as '• The child is father of the man"), have even 
passed into the popular mind, and are often quoted by 
those who know not whom they are quoting. Magnif- 
icent, again, is the sentiment, and yet an echo to one 
which lurks amongst all hearts, in relation to the 
frailty of merely human schemes for working good, 
which so often droop and collapse through the unsteadi- 
ness of human energies, — 

" foundations must be laid 

In Heaven." 

How? Foundations laid in realms that are above? 
Eut that is at war with physics ; — foundations must 
be laid below. Yes ; and even so the poet throws the 
mind yet more forcibly on the hyperphj'sical character 



41) ON Wordsworth's poetry. 

— on the grandeur transcending all physics — of those 
shadowy fountains which alone are enduring. 

But the great distinction of Wordsworth, and thtj 
pledge of his increasing popularity, is the extent of his 
sympathy with what is really permanent in human feel- 
ings, and also the depth of this sympathy. Young and 
Cowper, the two earlier leaders in the province of medi- 
tative poetry, are too circumscribed in the range of their 
symjiathies, too exclusive, and oftentimes not sufficiently 
profound. Both these poets manifested, the quality of 
their strength by the quality of their public reception 
Popular in some degree from the first, they entered upon 
the inheritance of their fame almost at once. Far dif- 
ferent was the fate of Wordsworth ; for, in poetry of this 
class, which appeals to what lies deepest in man, in 
proportion to the native power of the poet, and his fitness 
for permanent life, is the strength of resistance in the 
public taste. Whatever is too original will be hated at 
the first. It must slowly mould a public for itself; and 
the resistance of the early thoughtless judgments must 
be overcome by a counter resistance to itself, in a better 
audience slowly mustering against the first. Forty and 
seven years it is since William Wordsworth first ap- 
peared as an author. Twenty of those years he was the 
scoff of the world, and his poetry a by-word of scorn. 
Since then, and more than once, senates have rung with 
acclamations to the echo of his name. Now at this 
moment, while we are talking about him, he has entered 
upon his seventy-sixth year. For himself, according to 
the course of nature, he cannot be far from his setting; 
but his poetry is but now clearing the clouds that gath- 
ered about its rising. Meditative poetry is perhaps that 



ON WORDSWOKTIl's POETRY. 41 

which will finally maintain most power upon generations 
more thoughtful ; and in this department, at least, there 
is little competition to be appprehended by Wordsworth 
from anything that has appeared since the death of 
Shakspeare. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



There is no writer named amongst men, of whom, 
so much as of Percy Bysshe Shelley, it is difficult for 
a conscientious critic to speak with the truth and the 
respect due to his exalted powers, and yet without 
offence to feelings the most sacred, which too memo- 
rably he outraged. The indignation which this power- 
ful young writer provoked, had its root in no personal 
feelings — those might have been conciliated ; in no 
worldly feelings — those might have proved transitory ; 
but in feelings the holiest which brood over human 
life, and which guard the sanctuary of religious truth. 
Consequently, — which is a melancholy thought for any 
friend of Shelley's, — the indignation is likely to be co- 
extensive and coenduring with the writings that pro- 
voked it. That bitterness of scorn and defiance which 
still burns against his name in the most extensively 
meditative section of English society, namely, the reli- 
gious section, is not of a nature to be propitiated. Selfish 
interests, being wounded, might be compensated ; 
merely human interests might be soothed ; but inter- 
ests that transcend all human valuation, being so m- 
sulted, must upon principle reject all human ransom 

(42) 
« 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 43 

or comlltious of human oonipromise. Less than peni- 
tential recantation could not be accepted ; and that is 
now impossible. " Will ye transact ^ with God ? " is 
the indignant language of Milton in a case of that 
nature. And in this case the language of many pious 
lien said aloud, — "It is for God to forgive; but we, 
liis servants, are bound to recollect that this young 
man oflTered to Christ and to Christianity the deepest 
insnlt which ear has heard, or which it has entered into 
the heart of man to conceive." Others, as in Germany, 
had charged Christ with committing suicide, on the 
])rinciple that he who tempts or solicits death by doc- 
trines fitted to provoke that result, is virtually the 
causer of his own destruction. But in this sense every 
man commits suicide, who will not betray an interest 
confided to his keeping under menaces of death ; the 
martyr, who perishes for truth, when by deserting it 
he might live ; the patriot, who perishes for his coun- 
try, when by betraying it he might win riches and 
honor. And, were this even otherwise, the objection 
would be nothing to Christians — who, recognizing the 
Deity in Christ, recognize his unlimited right over life. 
Some, again, had pointed their insults at a part more 
vital in Christianity, if it had happened to be as vul- 
nerable as they fancied. The new doctrine introduced 
by Christ, of forgiveness to those who injure or who 
liate us, — on what footing was it placed ? Once, at 
least in aj)pearance, on the idea, that by assisting or 
forgiving an enemy, we should be eventually " heaping 
coals of fire upon his head." Mr. Howdon, in a very 
clever book [Rational Investigatiofi of the Principles 
oj Natural Philosophy : Loiidoii, IS^IO], calls this "a 



44 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

fiendish idea " (p. 290) : and I acknowledge tliat to 
myself, in one part of my boyhood, it did seem a refine 
ujent of mahce. My subtilizing habits, however, even 
in those days, soon suggested to me that this aggrava- 
tion of guilt in the object of our forgiveness was not 
held out as the motive to the forgiveness, but as the 
result of it ; secondly, that perhaps no aggravation of 
his guilt was the point contemplated, but the salutary 
stinging into life of his remorse, hitherto sleeping; 
thirdly, that every doubtful or perplexing expression 
must be overruled and determined by the prevailing 
spirit of the system in which it stands. If Mr. How- 
don's sense were the true one, then this passage would 
be in pointed hostility to every other part of the Chris- 
tian ethics. 2 

These were affronts to the Founder of Christianity, 
offered too much in the temper of malignity. But 
Shelley's was worse ; more bitter, and with less of 
countenance, even in show or shadow, from any fact, 
or insinuation of a fact, that Scripture suggests. In 
his " Queen Mab," he gives a dreadful portrait of God ; 
and that no question may arise, of what God ? he names 
him ; it is Jehovah. He asserts his existence ; he 
affirms him to be " an almighty God, and vengeful as 
almighty." He goes on to describe him as the " omnip- 
otent fiend," who found " none but slaves " [Israel in 
Egypt, no doubt] to be " his tools," and none but " a 
murderer" [Moses, I presume] "to be his accomplice 
in crime." He introduces this dreadful Almighty aa 
speaking, and as speaking thus, — 

'♦ From an eternity of idleness 

I, God, awoke ; in seven days' toil made earth 
From nothing ; rested ; and created man." 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. -tS 

But man he hates ; and he goes on to curse him ; till at 
the intercession of " the murderer," who is electrified 
into pity for the human race by the very horror of the 
divine curses, God promises to send his son — only, 
however, for the benefit of a few. This son appears , 
the poet tells us that — 

" the Incarnate came ; humbly he came. 

Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape 

Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard 

Save by the rabble of his native town." 

The poet pursues this incarnate God as a teacher of 
men ; teaching, " in semblance," justice, truth, and 
peace ; but underneath all this, kindling " quenchless 
flames," which eventually were destined 

" to satiate, with the blood 

Of truth and freedom, his malignant soul." 

He follows him to his crucifixion ; and describes him, 
whilst hanging on the cross, as shedding malice upon a 
re viler, — mclice on the cross ! 

" A smile of godlike malice reillumined 
His fading lineaments : ' ' 

and his parting breath is uttered in a memorable curse. 

This atrocious picture of the Deity, in his dealings 
with man, both pre-Christian and post-Christian, is 
certainly placed in the mouth of the wandering Jew. 
But the internal evidence, as well as collateral evidence 
from without, make it clear that the Jew (Avhose version 
of scriptural records nobody in the poem disputes) here 
represents the person of the poet. Shelley had opened 
his career as an atheist ; and as a proselytizing atheist. 



46 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

But he waa then a boy. At the date of " Queen Mab," 
he was a young man. And we now find him advanced 
from the station of an atheist to the more intellectual 
one of a believer in God and in the mission of Christ ; 
bat of one who fancied himself called upon to defy and 
to hate both, in so far as they had revealed their rela- 
tions to man. 

Mr. GilfiUan* thinks that " Shelley was far too 
harshly treated in his speculative boyhood;" and it 
strikes him " that, had pity and kind-hearted expostula- 
tion been tried, instead of reproach and abrupt expulsion, 
they might have weaned him from the dry dugs of 
Atheism to the milky breast of the faith and " worship of 
sorrovv ; " and the touching spectacle had been renewed, 
of the demoniac sitting, " clothed, and in his right 
mind," at the feet of Jesus. I am not of that opinion ; 
and it is an opinion which seems to question the siTicerity 
of Shelley, — that quality which in him was deepest, so 
as to form the basis of his nature, — if we allow our- 
selves to think that, by personal irritation, he had been 
piqued into infidelity, or that by flattering conciliation 
he could have been bribed back into a profession of 
Christianity. Like a wild horse of the pampas, he 
would have thrown up his heels, and whinnied his dis- 
dain of any man coming to catch him with a bribe of 
oats. He had a constant vision of a manger and a 
halter in the rear of all such caressing tempter^, once 
having scented the gales of what he thought perfect 
freedom, from the lawless desert. His feud with Chris- 
tianity was a craze derived from some early wrench of 

* " Gallery of Literary Porti'aits." 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 47 

his understanding, and made obstinate to the degree in 
which we find it, from having rooted itself in certain 
combinations of ideas that, once coalescing, could not 
be shaken loose ; such as, that Christianity under- 
propped the corruptions of the earth, in the shape of 
wicked governments that might else have been over- 
thrown, or of wicked priesthoods that, but for the 
shelter of shadowy and spiritual terrors, must have 
trembled before those whom they overawed. Kings 
that were clothed in bloody robes ; dark hierarchies 
that scowled upon the poor children of the soil; these 
objects took up a permanent station in the background 
of Shelley's imagination, not to be dispossessed more 
than the phantom of Banquo from the festival of Mac- 
beth, and composed a towering Babylon of mystery 
that, to his belief, could not have flourished under any 
umbrage less vast ■ than that of Christianity. Such 
was the inextricable association of images that domi- 
neered over Shelley's mind ; such was the hatred 
which he built upon that association, — an association 
casual and capricious, yet fixed and petrified as if by 
frost. Can we imagine the case of an angel touched 
by lunacy ? Have we ever seen the spectacle of a 
human intellect, exquisite by its functions of creation, 
yet in one chamber of its shadowy house already ruined 
before the light of manhood had cleansed its darkness ? 
Such an angel, such a man, — if ever such there 
were, — such a lunatic angel, such a ruined man, was 
Shelley, whilst yet standing on the earliest threshold 
of life. 

Mr. GilfiUan, whose eye is quick to seize the lurk- 
ing and the stealthy aspect of things, does not overlook 



48 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

tlie absolute midsummer madness which possessec 
Shelley upon the subject of Christianity. Shelley 'a 
total nature was altered and darkened when that theme 
arose ; transfiguration fell upon him. He that was so 
gentle, became savage ; he that breathed by the very 
lungs of Christianity — that was so merciful, so full of 
tenderness and pity, of humility, of love and forgive- 
ness, then raved and screamed like an idiot whom once 
r personally knew, when offended by a strain of heav- 
enly music at the full of the moon, la both cases, it 
was the sense of perfect beauty revealed under the 
sense of morbid estrangement. This it is, as I pre- 
sume, which Mr. Gilfillan alludes to in the following 
passage (p. 104) : " On all other subjects the wisest 
of the wise, the gentlest of the gentle, the bravest of 
the brave, yet, when one topic was introduced, he be- 
came straightway insane ; his eyes glared, his voice 
screamed, his hand vibrated frenzy." But Mr. Oilfil- 
lan is entirely in the wrong when he countenances the 
notion that harsh treatment had any concern in riveting 
the fanaticism of Shelley. On the contrary, he met 
with an indulgence to the first manifestation of his 
anti-Christian madness, better suited to the goodness 
of the lunatic than to the pestilence of his lunacy. It 
V'as at Oxford that this earliest explosion of Shelleyism 
occurred; and though, with respect to secrets of prison- 
houses, and to discussions that proceed " with closed 
doors," there is always a danger of being misinformed, 
I believe, from the uniformity of such accounts as have 
reached myself, that the following brief of the matter 
may be relied on. Shelley, being a venerable sage of 
sixteen, or rather less, came to the resolution that he 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 49 

vould convevt, and that it was his solemn duty to con- 
vert, the universal Christian church to Atheism or to 
Pantlicism, no great matter which. But, as such large 
undertakings require time, twenty months, suppose, or 
even two years, — for you kno\v, reader, that a rail- 
way requires on an average little less, — Shelley was 
determined to obey no impulse of youthful rashness. 
O no ! Down with presumption, down with levity, 
down with boyish precipitation ! Changes of religion 
are awful things , people must have time to think: He 
would move slowly and discreetly. So first he wrote 
a pamphlet, clearly and satisfactorily explaining the 
necessity of being an atheist; and with his usual ex- 
emplary courage (for, seriously, he was the least false 
of human creatures), Shelley put his name to the 
pamphlet, and the name of his college. His ultimate 
object was to accomplish a general apostasy in the 
Christian church of whatever name. But for one six 
months, it was quite enough if he caused a revolt in 
the Church of England. And as, before a great naval 
action, when the enemy is approaching, you throw a 
long shot or two by way of trying his range, — on that 
principle Shelley had thrown out his tract in Oxford. 
Oxford formed the advanced squadron of the English 
Church; and, by way of a coup d'essai, though in 
itself a bagatelle, what if he should begin with con-, 
verting Oxford ? To make any beginning at all is one 
half the battle ; or, as a writer in this magazine [June, 
1845] suggests, a good deal more. To speak seriously, 
there is something even thus far in the boyish presump- 
tion of Shelley not altogether without nobility. He 
affronted the armies of Christendom. Had it been 



50 PERCY BYSSFK SHELLEY. 

possible for him to be jesting, it would oiot have been 
noble. But here, even in the most monstrous of his 
undertakings, here, as always, he was perfectly sin 
cere and single-minded. Satisfied that Atheism was 
the sheet-anchor of the world, he was not the person 
to speak by halves. Being a boy, he attacked those 
(upon a point the most sure to irritate) who were gray; 
having no station in society, he flew at the throats of 
ii;3ne but those who had ; weaker than an infant for 
the pu-rpose before him, he planted his fist in the face 
of a giant, saying, " Take thxit^ you devil, and that^ 
and that.'''' The pamphlet had been published ; and 
though an undergraduate of Oxford is not (technically 
speaking) a member of the university as a responsible 
corporation, still he bears a near relation to it. And 
the heads of colleges felt a disagreeable summons to 
an extra meeting. There are in Oxford five-and-twenty 
colleges, to say nothing of halls. Frequent and. full 
the heads assembled in Golgotha, a well-known Oxonian 
chamber, which, being interpreted (as scripturally we 
know), is " the place of a skull," and must, therefore, 
naturally be the place of a head. There the heads met 
to deliberate. What was to be done ? Most of them 
were inclined to mercy: to proceed at all — was to pro- 
ceed to extremities ; and (generally speaking) to expel 
a man from Oxford, is to ruin his prospects in any of 
the liberal professions. Not, therefore, from considera- 
tion for Shelley's position in society, but on the kindest 
motives of forbearance towards one so young, the heads 
decided for declining all notice of the pamphlet. Level- 
led at them, it was not specially addressed to them ; and 
amongst the infinite children born every morning from 



PF.KCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 51 

that imghtiest of mothers, the press, why should Gol- 
gotha be supposed to have known anything, officially, 
of this little brat ? That evasion might suit some peo- 
ple, but not Percy Bysshe Shelley. There was a flaw 
(was there?) in his process; his pleading could not, 
regularly, come up before the court. Very well — 
he would heal that defect immediately. So he sent 
his pamphlet, with five-and-twenty separate letters, 
addressed to the five-and-twenty heads of colleges in 
Golgotha assembled ; courteously " inviting " all and 
every of them to notify, at his earliest convenience, 
his adhesion to the enclosed unanswerable arguments 
for Atheism. Upon this, it is undeniable that Gol- 
gotha looked black ; and, after certain formalities, 
" invited " P. B. Shelley to consider himself expelled 
from the University of Oxford, But, if this wern 
harsh, how would Mr. GilfiUan have had them to pro- 
ceed ? Already they had done, perhaps, too much in 
the way of forbearance. There were many men in 
Oxford who knew the standing of Shelley's family. 
Already it was whispered that any man of obscure 
connections would have been visited for his Atheism, 
whether writing to Golgotha or not. And this whisper 
would have strengthened, had any further neglect been 
shown to formal letters, \vhich requested a formal 
answer. The authorities of Oxford, deeply responsible 
to the nation in a matter of so much peril, could not 
have acted otherwise than they did. They were not 
severe. The severity was extorted and imposed by 
Shelley. But, on the other hand, in some palliation 
of Shelley's conduct, it ought to be noticed that he is 
unfairly piaced, by the undistinguishing, on the manly 



62 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

Station of an ordinary Oxford student. The under- 
graduates of Oxford and Cambridge are not "boys," as 
a considerable proportion must be, for good reasons 
in other universities, — the Scottish universities, for in- 
stance, of Glasgow and St. Andrews, and many of those 
on the continent. Few of the English students even 
begin their residence before eighteen ; and the larger 
proportion are at least twenty. Whereas Shelley was 
really a boy at this era, and no man. He had entered 
on his sixteenth year, and he was still in tho earliest 
part of his academic career, when his obstinate and 
reiterated attempt to inoculate the university with a 
disease that he fancied indispensable to their mental 
health, caused his expulsion. 

I imagine that Mr. GilfiUan will find himself compelled, 
hereafter, not less by his own second thoughts, than by 
the murmurs of some amongst his readers, to revise that 
selection of memorial traits, whether acts or habits, by 
which he seeks to bring Shelley, as a familiar presence, 
within the field of ocular apprehension. The acts 
selected, unless characteristic, — the habits selected, un- 
less representative, — must be absolutely impertinent to 
the true identification of the man ; and most of those 
rehearsed by Mr. GilfiUan, unless where they happen to 
be merely accidents of bodily constitution, are such as 
all of us would be sorry to suppose naturally belonging 
to Shelley. To " rush out of the room in terror, as his 
V'ild imagination painted to him a pair of eyes in a 
lady's breast," is not so much a movement of poetic 
frenzy, as of typhus fever — to " terrify an old lady out 
of her wits," by assuming, in a stage-coach, the situation 
of a r(!gal sufTerei from Shakspeare, is not eccentricity 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 53 

SO much as painful discourtesy — and to request of 
Rowland Hill, a man most pious and sincere, " the use 
of Surrey chapel," as a theatre for publishing infidelity, 
would have been so thoroughly the act of a heartless 
coxcomb, that I, for one, cannot bring myself to believe 
it an authentic anecdote. Not that I doubt of Shelley's 
violating at times his own better nature, as every man 
is capable of doing, under youth too fervid, wine too 
potent, and companions too misleading ; but it strikes me 
tliat, during Shelley's very earliest youth, the mere acci- 
dent of Rowland Hill's being a man well-born and aris- 
tocratically connected, yet sacrificing these advantages 
to what he thought the highest of services, spiritual 
service on behalf of poor laboring men, would have laid 
a pathetic arrest upon any impulse of fun in one who, 
with the very same advantages of birth and position, 
had the same deep reverence for the rights of the poor. 
Willing, at all times, to forget his own pretensions in 
the presence of those who seemed powerless — willing 
in a degree that seems sublime — Shelley could not but 
have honored the same nobility of feeling in another. 
And Rowland Hill, by his guileless simplicity, had a 
separate hold upon a nature so childlike as Shelley's. He 
was full of love to mar ; so was Shelley. He was full 
of humility ; so was Shelley. Difference of creed, how- 
ever vast the interval which it created between the men. 
fould not have hid from Shelley's eye the close approxi- 
mation of their natures. Infidel by his intellect, Shelley 
was a Christian in the tendencies of his heart. As to 
his " lying asleep on the hearth-rug, with his small round 
head thrust almost into the very fire," this, like his 
" basking in the hottest beams of an Italian sun," illus- 



04 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

trates nothing but his physical temperament. That he 
should be seen " devouring large pieces of bread amid 
his profound abstractions," simply recalls to my eye some 
hundred thousands of children in the streets of great 
cities, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, whom I am daily 
detecting in the same unaccountable practice ; and yet, 
probably, with very little abstraction to excuse it ; whilst 
his " endless cups of tea," in so tea-drinking a land as 
ours, have really ceased to offer the attractions of novelty 
which, eighty years ago, in the reign of Dr. Johnson, 
and under a higher price of tea, they might have secured. 
Such habits, however, are inoffensive, if not particularly 
mysterious, nor particularly significant. But that, m 
lefect of a paper boat, Shelley should launch upon the 
Serpentine a fifty pound bank note, seems to my view 
an act of childishness, or else (which is worse) an act 
of empty ostentation, not likely to proceed from one who 
generally exhibited in his outward deportment a sense 
of true dignity. He who, through his family. ^ con- 
nected himself with that " spirit without spot " (as Shelley 
calls him in the " Adonais "), Sir Philip Sidney (a man 
how like in gentleness, and in faculties of mind, to him- 
self!) — he that, by consequence, connected himself 
with that later descendant of Penshurst, the noble 
martyr of freedom, Algernon Sidney, could not have 
degraded himself by a pride so mean as any which roots 
itself in wealth. On the other hand, in the anecdote cf 
his repeating Dr. Johnson's benign act, by " lifting a poor 
houseless outcast upon his back, and carrying her to a 
place of refuge," I read so strong a character of internal 
probability, that it would be gratifying to know upon 
what external testimony it rests. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



55 



Tiie life of Shelley, according to the remark ot Mr. 
UilfiUan, was "among the most romantic in literary 
story." Everything was romantic in his short career ; 
everything wore a tragic interest. From his childhood 
he moved through a succession of afflictions. Always 
craving for love, loving and seeking to be loved, always 
lie was destined to reap hatred from those with whom 
life had connected him. If in the darkness he raised 
up images of his departed hours, he would behold his 
family disownmg him, and the home of his infancy 
knowing him no more ; he would behold his magnificent 
university, that, under happier circumstances, would have 
gloried in his genius, rejecting him forever ; he would 
behold his first wife, whom once he had loved passion- 
ately, through calamities arising from himself, called 
away to an early and tragic death. The peace after 
which his heart panted forever, in what dreadful contrast 
it stood to the eternal contention upon which his restless 
intellect or accidents of position threw him like a pas- 
sive victim ! It seemed as if not any choice of his, but 
some sad doom of opposition from without, forced out, 
as by a magnet, struggles of frantic resistance from Mm, 
which as gladly he would have evaded as ever victim 
of epilepsy yearned to evade his convulsions! Gladly 
he would have slept in eternal seclusion, whilst eternally 
the trump summoned him to battle. In storms unwil- 
lingly created by himself, he lived; in a storm, cited by 
the finger of God, he died. 

It is affecting, — at least it is so for any one who 
believes in the profound sincerity of Shelley, a man 
(however erring) whom neither fear, nor hope, nor vanity, 
nor hatred, ever seduced into falsehood, or even into 



56 PERCY BYSSHJE SHELLEY. 

dissimulation, — to read the account which he gives of 
a revolution occurring in his own mind at school: sc 
early did his struggles begin ! It is m verse, and forms 
part of those beautiful stanzas addressed to his second 
wife, which he prefixed to "The Revolt of Islam." 
Five or six of these stanzas may be quoted with a cer- 
tainty of pleasing many readers, whilst they throw light 
on the early condition of Shelley's feelings, and of his 
early anticipations with regard to the promises and the 
menaces of life. 

" Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first 
The clouds which wrap this world, from youth did pass. 
I do remember well the hour which burst 
My spirit's sleep ; a fresh May-dawn it was. 
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass. 
And wept — I knew not why ; until there rose, 
From the near school-room, voices that, alas ' 
Were but one echo from a world of woes — 

The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 

And then I clasped my hands, and looked around — 
(But none was near to mock my streaniing eyes. 
Which poured their warm di'ops on the sunny ground) — 
So without shame I spake — I will be wise. 
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies 
Such power ; for I grow weary to behold 
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize 
Without reproach or check. I then controlled 
My tears ; my heart grew calm ; and I was meek and lold. 

And from that hour did I with earnest thought 
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore : 
Yet nothing, tha** my tyrants knew or taught, 
I cared to learn ; but from that secret store 
Wrought linked armor for my soul, before 
It might walk forth to war among mankind : 



PERCY BVSSIIE SHELLEY. 57 

Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more 
Within me, till there came upon my mind 
A. sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. 

Alas, that love should be a blight and snare 
To those who seek all sympathies in one ! — 
Such once I sought in vam ; then black despair, 
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown 
Over the world in which I moved alone : — 
Yet never found I one not false to me. 
Hard hearts and cold, like weights of icy stone 
Which ci"ushed and withered mine, that could not be 
Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee. 

Thou, friend, whose presence on my wintry heart 
Fell, like bright spring upon some herbless plain ; 
How beautiful and calm and free thou wert 
In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain 
Of Custom -i thou didst burst and rend in twain. 
And walk'd as free as light the clouds among. 
Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain 
From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung 
To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long. 

No more alone through the world's wilderness. 
Although I trod the paths of high intent, 
I journeyed now ; no more companionless. 
Where solitude is like despair, I went. 



Now has descended a serener hour ; 
And, with inconstant fortune, friends return : 
Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power 
Which says — Let scorn be not repaidwith scorn. 
And from thy side two gentle babes are born 
To fill our home with smiles ; and thus are we 
Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn ; 
And these delights and thou have been to me 
The parents of the song I consecrate to thee." 

3* 



5S PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

My own attention was first drawn to Shelley by the 
report of his Oxford labors as a missionary in the 
service of infidelity. Abstracted from the absolute 
sincerity and simplicity which governed that boyish 
movement, qualities which could not be known to a 
stranger, or even suspected in the midst of so much 
extravagance, there was nothing in the Oxford reports 
of him to create any interest beyond that of wonder 
at his folly and presumption in pushing to such ex- 
tremity what, naturally, all people viewed as an 
elaborate jest. Some curiosity, however, even at that 
time, must have gathered about his name ; for I re- 
member seeing, in London, a little Indian ink sketch 
of him in the academic costume of Oxford. The 
sketch tallied pretty well with a verbal description 
which I had heard of him in some company, namely, 
that he looked like an elegant and slender flower, 
whose head drooped from being surcharged with rain. 
This gave, to the chance observer, an impression that 
he was tainted, even in his external deportment, by 
some excess of sickly sentimentalism, from which I 
believe that, in all stages of his life, he was remark- 
ably free. Between two and three years after this 
period, which was that of his expulsion from Oxford, 
he married a beautiful girl named Westbrook. She 
was respectably connected ; but had not moved in a 
rank corresponding to Shelley's ; and that accident 
brought him into my own neighborhood For his 
'amily, already estranged from him, were now thor- 
oughly irritated by what they regarded as a mesalliance, 
and withdrew, or greatly reduced, his pecuniary allow- 
ances. Such, at least, was the story current. In this 



PERCY BYSSIIE SMFLLEY. 59 

embarrassment, his wife's father made over to him an 
annual income of £200 ; and, as economy had become 
important, the youthful pair — both, in fact, still 
children — came down to the Lakes, supposing this 
region of Cumberland and Westmoreland to be a 
sequestered place, which it ivas, for eight months in 
the ear, and also to be a cheap place — which it was 
not. Another motive to this choice arose with the 
then Duke of Norfolk. He was an old friend of 
Shelley's family, and generously refused to hear a 
word of the young man's errors, except where he 
could do anything to relieve him from their conse- 
quences. His grace possessed the beautiful estate of 
Gobarrow Park on Ulleswater, and other estates of 
greater extent in the same two counties ; ^ his own 
agents he had directed to furnish any accommodations 
that might meet Shelley's views ; and he had written 
to some fifentlemen amonsfst his agricultural friends in 
Cumberland, requesting them to pay such neighborly 
attentions to the solitary young people as circum- 
stances might place in their power. This bias, being 
impressed upon Shelley's wanderings, naturally brought 
him to Keswick as the most central and the largest 
of the little towns . dispersed amongst the lakes. 
Southey, made aware of the interest taken in Shelley 
by the Duke of Norfolk, with his usual kindness 
immediately called upon him ; and the ladies of 
Soutliey's family subsequently made an early :all 
upon Mrs, Shelley. One of them mentioned to me 
as occurring in this first visit an amusing expression 
of the youthful matron, which, four years later, when 
I heard of her gloomy end, recalled with the force 



60 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

of a pathetic contrast, that icy arrest then chaining up 
her youthful feet forever. The Shelleys had been 
induced by one of their new friends to take part of a 
house standing about half a mile out of Keswick, on 
the Penrith road ; more, I believe, in that friend's 
intention for the sake of bringing them easily within 
his hospitalities, than for any beauty in the place. 
There was, however, a pretty garden attached to it. 
And whilst walking in this, one of the Southey party 
asked Mrs. Shelley if the garden had been let with 
their part of the house. " O, no," she replied, " the 
garden is not ours ; but then, you know, the people 
let us run about in it whenever Percy and I are tired 
of sitting in the house." The naivete of this expres- 
sion " run about," contrasting so picturesquely with 
the intermitting efforts of the girlish wife at support- 
ing a matron-like gravity, now that she was doing the 
honors of her house to married ladies, caused all the 
party to smile. And me it caused profoundly to sigh, 
four years later, when the gloomy deatH of this young 
creature, now frozen in a distant grave, threw back 
my remembrance upon her fawn-like playfulness, 
which, unconsciously to herself, the girlish phrase of 
run about so naturally betrayed. 

At that time I had a cottage myself in Grasmere, 
just thirteen miles distant from Shelley's new abode. 
As he had then written nothing of any interest, I had 
no motive for calling upon him, except by way of 
showing any little attentions in my power to a brother 
Oxonian, and to a man of letters. These attentions, 
indeed, he might have claimed simpiy in the character 
of a neig-hbor. For as men living: on the coast oi 



PEKCY BVSSHE SlIKLLEY. 61 

Mavo or Galway are apt to consider the dwellers on 
the sea-board of North America in the light of next- 
door neighbors, divided only by a party-wall of crystal, 
— and what if accidentally three thousand miles 
thick ? — on the same principle we amongst the 
slender population of this lake region, and wherever 
no ascent intervened between two parties higher than 
Dunmaii Raise and the spurs of Helvellyn, were apt 
to take with each other the privileged tone of neigh- 
bors. Some neighborly advantages I might certainly 
have placed at Shelley's disposal — Grasmere, for 
instance, itself, which tempted at that time^ by a 
beauty that had not been sullied ; Wordsworth, who 
then lived in Grasmere ; Elleray and Professor Wilson, 
nine miles further; finally, my own library, which, 
being rich in the wickedest of German speculations, 
would naturally have been more to Shelley's taste 
than the Spanish librarj^ of Southey. 

But all these temptations were negatived for Shelley 
by his sudden departure. Off he went in a hurry ; 
but why he went, or whither he went, I did not inquire ; 
not guessing the interest which he would create in 
my mind, six years later, by his "Revolt of Islam." 
A life of Shelley, in a continental edition of his 
works, says that he went to Edinburgh and to Ireland. 
Some time after, we at the lakes heard that he was 
living in Wales. Apparently he had the instinct 
within him of his own Wandering Jew for eternal 
restlessness. But events were now hurrying upon his 
heart of hearts. Within less than ten years the whole 
arrear of his life was destined to revolve. Within 
that space, he had the whole burden of life and death 



62 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

to exhaust ; he had all his suffering to suffer, and all 
his work to work. 

Ill about four years his first marriage was dissolved 
by the death of his wife. She had brought to Shelley 
two children. But feuds arose between them, owing 
tc incompatible habits of mind. They parted. And 
it IS one chief misery of a beautiful young woman, 
separated from her natural protector, that her desolate 
situation attracts and stimulates the calumnies of the 
malicious. Stung by these calumnies, and oppressed 
(as I have understood) by the loneliness of her abode, 
perhaps also by the delirium of fever, she threw her- 
self into a pond, and was drowned. The name under 
which she first enchanted all eyes, and sported as the 
most playful of nymph-like girls, is now forgotten 
amongst men ; and that other name, for a brief period 
her ambition and. her glory, is inscribed on her grave- 
stone as the name under which she wept and she 
despaired, — suffered and was buried, — turned away 
even from the faces of her children, and sought a 
hiding-place in darkness. 

After this dreadful event, an anonymous life of 
Shelley asserts that he was for some time deranged. 
Pretending to no private and no circumstantial ac- 
quaintance with the case, I cannot say how that really 
was. There is a great difficulty besetting all sketches 
of lives so steeped in trouble as was Shelley's, If 
you have a confidential knowledge of the case, as a 
dear friend privileged to stand by the bed-side of 
raving grief, how base to use such advantages of 
position for the gratification of a fugitive curiosity 
in strangers ! If you have no such knowledge, how 



VERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 63 

little qualified you must be for tracing the life with 
the truth of sympathy, or for judging it with the truth 
of charity ! To me it appears, from the peace of 
mind which Shelley is reported afterwards to have 
reco\ercd for a time, that he could not have had to 
reproach himself with any harshness or neglect as 
contributing to the shocking catastrophe. Neither 
ought any reproach to rest upon the memory of this 
first wife, as respects her relation to Shelley. Non- 
conformity of tastes might easily rise between two 
parties, without much blame to either, when one of 
the two had received from nature an intellect and a 
temperament so dangerously eccentric, and constitu- 
tionally carried, by delicacy so exquisite of organiza- 
tion, to eternal restlessness and irritability of nerves, 
if not absolutely at times to lunacy. 

About three years after this* tragic event, Shelley, 
in company with his second wife, the daughter of God- 
win, and Mary Wollstonecraft, passed over for a third 
time to the Continent, from which he never came back. 
On Monday, July 8, 1822, being then in his twenty- 
ninth year, he was returning from Leghorn to his home 
at Lerici, in a schooner-rigged boat of his own, twenty- 
four feet long, eight in the beam, and drawing four 
feet water. His companions were only two, — Mr. Wil- 
liams, formerly of the Eighth Dragoons, and Charles 
Vivian, an English seaman in Shelley's service. The 
run homewards would not have occupied more than 
six or eight hours. But the Gulf of Spezia is pecu- 
liarly dangerous for small craft in bad weather ; and 
unfortunately a squall of about one hour's duration 
came on, the wind at the same time shifting so as to 



64 PERCY BYSSIIE SHELLEY. 

blow exactly in the teetli of the course to Lerici 
From the interesting narrative drawn up by Mr. Tre 
lawney, well known at that time for his ronnection 
with the Greek Revolution, it seems that for eight day? 
the fate of the boat was unknown ; and during that 
time couriers had been despatched along the whole line 
of coast between Leghorn and Nice, under anxious 
hopes that the voyagers might have run into some 
creek for shelter. But at the end of the eight days 
this suspense ceased. Some articles belonging to Shel- 
ley's boat had previously been washed ashore : these 
might have been thrown overboard ; but finally the 
two bodies of Shelley and Mr. Williams came on shore 
near Via Reggio, about four miles apart. Both were 
in a state of advanced decomposition, but were fully 
identified. Vivian's body was not recovered for three 
weeks. From the state of the two corpses, it had 
become difficult to remove them ; and they were there 
fore burned by the seaside, on funeral pyres, with 
the classic rites of paganism, four English gentlemen 
being present, — Capt, Shenley of the navy, Mr. Leigh 
Hunt, Lord Byron, and Mr. Trelawney. A circum 
stance is added by Mr. GilfiUan, which previous 
accounts do not mention, namely, that Shelley's heart 
remained unconsumed by the fire ; but this is a phe- 
nomenon that has repeatedly occurred at judicial deaths 
by fire. The remains of Mr. Williams, when col- 
lected from the fire, were conveyed to England; but 
Slielley's were buried in the Protestant burying-ground 
at Rome, not far from a child of his own and Keats 
the poet. It is remarkable that Shelley, in the preface 
to his Adonais, dedicated to the memory of that young 



PERCY BYSSIIE SHELLEY. 6^ 

poet, had spoken with delight of this cemetery, — as 
" An open space among the ruins " (of ancient Riime), 
" covered in winter with violets and daisies ; " adding, 
" It might make one in love with death, to think that 
one should be buried in so sweet a place." 

I have allowed myself to abridge the circumstances 
as reported by Mr. Trelawney and Mr. Hunt, partly 
on the consideration that three-and-twenty years have 
passed since the event, so that a new generation has 
had time to grow up — not feeling the interest of con- 
tonporaries in Shelley, and generally, therefore, unac- 
quainted with the case ; but partly for the purpose of 
introducing the following comment of Mr. Gilfillan on 
the striking points of a catastrophe, " which robbed 
the world of this strange and great spirit," and which 
secretly tempts men to superstitious feelings, even 
whilst they are denying them : — 

" Everybody knovs^ that, on the arrival of Leigh 
Hunt in Italy, Shelley hastened to meet him. During 
all the time he spent in Leghorn, he was in brilliant 
spirits — to him ever a sure prognostic of coming evil." 
[That is, in the Scottish phrase, he was fey. 1 " On his 
return to his home dnd family, his skiff was overtaken 
by a fearful hurricane, and all on board perished. To 
a gentleman, who, at that time, was with a glass sur- 
veying the sea, the scene of his drowning assumed a 
very striking appearance. A great many vessels were 
visible, and among them one small skiff, which at- 
tracted his particular attention. Suddenly a dreadful 
storm, attended by thunder and columns of lightning, 
swept over the sea and eclipsed the prospect. When 
U had passed he looked again. The larger vessels 
5 



66 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

were all safe, riding upon the swell ; the skiff only 
had gone down forever. And in that skiff was Alas 
tor ! "^ Here he had met his fate. Wert thou, 
religious sea, only avenging on his head the cause of 
thy denied and insulted Deity ? Were ye, ye ele- 
ments, in your courses, commissioned to destroy him ? 
Ah ! there is no reply. The surge is silent ; the ele- 
ments have no voice. In the eternal councils the secret 
is hid of the reason of the man's death. And there, 
too, rests the still more tremendous secret of the char- 
acter of his destiny." ^ 

The last remark possibly pursues the scrutiny too 
far ; and, conscious that it tends beyond the limits of 
charity, Mr. Gilfillan recalls himself from the attempt 
to fathom the unfathomable. But undoubtedly the 
temptation is great, in minds the least superstitious, to 
read a significance, and a silent personality, in such a 
fate applied to such a defier of the Christian heavens. 
As a shepherd by his dog fetches out one of his fliock 
from amongst five hundred, so did the holy hurricane 
seem to fetch out from the multitude of sails that one 
which carried him that hated the hopes of the world; 
and the sea, which swelled and ran down within an 
hour, was present at the audit. We are rem.inded 
forcibly of the sublime storm in the wilderness (as 
given in the fourth book of "Paradise Regained"), 
and the remark upon it made by the mysterious 
tempter — 

" This tempest at this desert most was bent. 
Of men at thee." 

Undoubtedly, I do not understand Mr. Gilfillan, more 



rEIlCV BYSSIIE SHELLEY. 67 

than myself, to road a "judgment" in this catastrophe, 
But there is a solemn appeal to the thoughtful, in 
a death of so nmch terrific grandeur following upon 
defiances of such unparalleled audacity. iEschylus 
acknowledged the same sense of mysterious awe, and 
all anli(iuity acknowledged it, in the story of Amphia- 
raus.y 

Shelley, it must be remembered, carried his irre- 
ligion to a point beyond all others. Of the darkest 
beings we are told, that they " believe and tremble ; " 
but Shelley believed and hated; and his defiances 
were meant to show that he did not tremble. Yet, 
has he not the excuse of something like monomania 
upon this subject? I firmly believe it. But a super- 
stition, old as the world, clings to the notion, that 
words of deep meaning, uttered even by lunatics or by 
idiots, execute themselves ; and that also, when uttered 
in presumption, they bring round their own retributive 
chastisements. 

On the other hand, however shocked at Shelley's 
obstinate revolt from all religious sympathies with his 
fellow-men, no man is entitled to deny the admirable 
qualities of his moral nature, which were as striking 
as his genius. Many people remarked something se- 
raphic in the expression of his features ; and something 
seraphic there was in his nature. No man was better 
qualified to have loved Christianity ; and to no man, 
resting under the shadow of that one darkness, would 
Christianity have said more gladly — talis cum sis, 
utiiiam nosier esses! Shelley would, from his earliest 
manhood, have sacrificed all that he possessed t' any 
comprehensive purpose of good for the race of man 



68 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

He dismissed all injuries and insults from his memory. 
He was the sincerest and the most truthful of human 
creatures. He was also the purest. If he denounced 
marriage as a vicious institution, that was but another 
phasis of the partial lunacy which affected him ; for tc 
no man were purity and fidelity more essential ele 
ments in his idea of real love. 

I agree, therefore, heartily with Mr. Gilfillan, in pro 
testing against the thoughtless assertion of some write* 
in The Edinburgh Reniew — that Shelley at all selected 
the story of his " Cenci " on account of its horrors, or 
that he has found pleasure in dwelling on those horrors. 
So far from it, he has retreated so entirely from the 
most shocking feature of the story, namely, the inces- 
tuous violence of Cenci the father, as actually to leave 
it doubtful whether the murder were in punishment of 
the last outrage committed, or in repulsion of a menace 
continually repeated. The true motive of the selection 
of such a story was — not its darkness, but (as Mr. 
Gilfillan, with so much penetration, perceives) the light 
which fights with the darkness : Shelley found the 
whole attraction of this dreadful tale in the angelic 
nature of Beatrice, as revealed in the portrait of her 
oy Guido. Everybody who has read with under- 
standing the " Wallenstein " of Schiller, is aware of the 
repose and the divine relief arising upon a background 
of so much darkness, such a tumult of ruffians, bloody 
intriguers, and assassins, from the situation of the two 
lovers. Max. Piccolomini and the Princess Thekla, both 
yearning so profoundly after peace, both so noble, both 
so young, and both destined to be so unhappy. The 
same fine relief, the same light shining in darkncra 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 69 

arises here from the touching- beauty of Beatrice, from 
her noble aspirations after deliverance, from the re- 
morse which reaches her in the midst of real inno- 
cence, from her meekness, and from the agitation of 
her inexpressible affliction. Even the murder, even 
tlie parricide, though proceeding from herself, do but 
deepen that background of darkness, which throws 
into fuller revelation the glory of that suffering face 
immortalized by Guido. 

Something of a similar effect arises to myself when 
reviewing the general abstract of Shelley's life, — so 
brief, so full of agitation, so full of strife. When one 
thinks of the early misery which he suffered, and of 
the insolent infidelity which, being yet so young, he 
wooed with a lover's passion, then the darkness of 
midnight begins to form a deep, impenetrable back- 
ground, upon which the phantasmagoria of all that is 
to come may arrange itself in troubled phosphoric 
streams, and in sweeping processions of woe. Yet, 
again, when one recurs to his gracious nature, his fear- 
lessness, his truth, his purity from all fleshliness of 
appetite, his freedom from vanity, his diffusive love 
and tenderness, — suddenly, out of the darkness, reveals 
itself a morning of May ; forests and thickets of roses 
advance to the foreground ; from the midst of them 
looks out " the eternal '^^ child," cleansed from his sor- 
row, radiant with joy, having power given him to forget 
the misery which he suffered, power given him to forget 
the misery w'hich he caused, and leaning with his heart 
upon that dove-like faith against which his erring m- 
tellect had rebelled. 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 43. 

"Transact:" — this word, used in this Roman sense, illus- 
trates the particular mode of Milton's liberties with the English 
language : liberties which have never yet been properly examined, 
collated, numbered, or appreciated. In the Roman law, transi- 
gere expressed the case, where each of two conflicting parties con- 
ceded something of what originally he had claimed as the rigor of 
his right ; and iransactio was the technical name for a legal com- 
promise. Milton has here introduced no new word into the English 
language, but has given a new and more learned sense to an old 
one. Sometimes, it is true, as in the word sensuous, he introduces 
a pure coinage of his own, and a vei-y useful coinage ; but gener- 
ally to reendow an old foundation is the extent of his innovations. 
M. de Tocqueville is therefore likely to be found wrong in saying, 
that " Milton alone introduced more than six hundred words into 
the English language, almost all derived from the Latin, the 
Greek, or the Hebrew." The passage occurs in the 16th chapter 
of his " Democracy in America," Part IL, where M. de Tocqueville 
is discussing the separate agencies through which democratic life 
on the one hand, or aristocratic on the other, affects the changes 
of language. His English translator, Mr. H. Reeve, an able and 
philosophic annotator, justly views this bold assertion as "start- 
ling and probably erroneous." 

(71) 



72 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

Note 2. Page 44. 

Since the boyish period in which these redressing corrections 
occurred to me, I have seen some reason (upon considering the 
oriental practice of placing live coals in a pan upon the head, and 
its meaning as still in use amongst the Turks) to alter the whole 
interpretation of the passage. It would too much interrupt the 
tenor of the subject to explain this at length; but, if right, it 
would equally harmonize with the spirit of Christian morals 

Note 3. Page 54. 

" Family : " i. e., the gens in the Roman sense, or collective 
house. Shelley's own immediate branch of the house did not, in 
a legal sense, represent the family of Peushurst, because the rights 
of the lineal descent had settled upon another branch. But his 
branch had a collateral participation in the glory of the Sidney 
name, and might, by accidents possible enough, have come to be 
its sole representative. 

Note 4. Page 57. 

" Of Custom : " — This alludes to a theory of Shelley's, on the 
subject of marriage as a vicious institution, and an attempt to 
realize his theory by way of public example ; which attempt there 
is no use in noticing more particularly, as it was subsequently 
abandoned. Originally he had derived his theory from the writ- 
ings of Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of his second wife, whose 
birth in fact had cost that mother her life. But by the year 1812, 
(the year following his first marriage), he had so fortified, from 
other quarters, his previous opinions upon the wickedness of all 
nuptial ties consecrated by law or by the church, that he apolo- 
gized to his friends for having submitted to the marriage ceremony 
as for an offence ; but an offence, he pleaded, rendered necessary 
by the vicious constitution of society, for the comfort of his female 
partner. 

Note 5. Page 59. 
Two counties:" — the frontier line between Westmoreland 



NOTEb. 73 

and Cumberland, traverses obliquely the Lake of Ulleswater, so 
that the banks on both sides lie partly in both counties. 

Note 6. Page 61. 

" At Ihat time ! " — the reader will say, who happens to be aware 
of the mighty barriers which engirdle Grasmere, Fairfield, Ar- 
thur's Chair, Seat Sandal, Steil Fell, &c. (the lowest above two 
thousand, the highest above three thousand feet high) , — " what 
then ? do the mountains change, and the mountain tarns ? " Per- 
haps not ; but, if they do not change in substance or in form, they 
" change countenance " when they are disfigured from below. One 
cotton-mill, planted bj' the side of a torrent, disenchants the scene, 
and banishes the ideal beauty even in the case where it leaves the 
physical beauty untouched : a truth which, many years ago, I 
saw illustrated in the little hamlet of Church Coniston. But is 
there any cotton-mill in Grasmere ? Not that I have heard : but 
if no water has been filched away from Grasmere, there is one 
water too much which has crept lately into that loveliest of moun- 
tain chambers ; and that is the " water-cure," which has built unto 
itself a sort of residence in that vale ; whether a rustic nest, or a 
lordly palace, I do not know. Meantime, in honesty it must be 
owned, that many years ago the vale was half ruined by an insane 
substruction carried along the eastern margin of the lake as a 
basis for a mail-coach road. This infernal mass of solid masonry 
swept away the loveliest of sylvan recesses, and the most absolutely 
charmed against intrusive foot or angry echoes. It did worse ; it 
swept away the stateliest of Flora's daughters, and swept away, at 
the same time, the birth-place of a well-known verse, describing 
that stately plant, which is perhaps (as a separate line) the most 
exquisite that the poetry of earth can show. The plant was the 
Osmunda regalis : 

" Plant lovelier in its own recess 
Than Grecian Naiad seen at earliest dawn 
Tending her fount, or Indy of the lake 
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance." 

It is this last line and a half which some have held to ascend in 
beauty as much beyond any single line known to literature, as the 



74 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

Osmunda ascends in luxury of splendor above other ferns. I have 
restored the original word lake, which the poet himself under an 
erroneous impression had dismissed for mere. But the line rests 
no longer on an earthly reality — the recess, which suggested it, is 
gone : the Osmunda has fled ; and a vile causeway, such as Sin and 
Deatli build in Milton over Chaos, faste«iug it with "asphaltic 
slinie " and " pins of adamant," having long displaced the loveliest 
chapel (as I may call it) in the whole cathedral of Grasmere, I have 
eiiice considei'ed Grasmere itself a ruin of its foi-mer self. 

Note 7. Page 66. 

*' Alastor," i. e., Shelley. Mr. Gilfillan names him thus fi'om 
the designation, self-assumed by Shelley, in one of the least intel 
ligible amongst his poems. 

Note 8. Page 66. 

The immediate cause of the catastrophe was supposed to be this : 
— Shelley's boat had reached a distance of four miles from the 
shore, when the storm suddenly arose, and the wind suddenly 
shifted: " from excessive smoothness," says Mr. Trelawney, all at 
once the sea was " foaming, breaking, and getting up into a very 
heavy swell." After one hour the swell went down ; and towards 
evening it was almost a calm. The circumstances wei-e all ad- 
-'erse : the gale, the current setting into the gulf, the instantaneous 
change of wind, acting upon an undecked boat, having all the 
sheets fast, overladen, and no expert hands on bo.ard but one, made 
the foundering as sudden as it was inevitable. The boat is sup- 
posed to have filled to leeward, and (carrying two tons of ballast) 
to have gone down like a shot. A book found in the po-^ket of 
Shelley, and the unaltered state of the dress on all the corpses 
when washed on shore, sufficiently indicated that not a nuiment'a 
preparation for meeting the danger had been possible. 

Note 9. Page 67. 
See " The Seven against Thebes " of .^Eschylus. 



NOTES. 



/5 



Note 10. Page 69. 



« The eternal child : " — this beautiful expression, so true in its 
application to Shelley, I borrow from Mr. Gilfillan ; and I am 
tempted to add the rest of his eloquent parallel between Shelley 
and Lord Byron, so far as it relates to their external appearance : 
_"In the forehead and head of Byron there is more massive 
power and breadth : Shelley's has a smooth, arched, spiritual ex- 
pression ; wrinkle there seems none on his brow ; it is as if per- 
petual youth had there dropped its freshness. Byron's eye seems 
the focus of pride and lust ; Shelley's is mild, pensive, fixed on 
you, but seeing you through the mist of his own idealism. Defi- 
ance curls on Byron's nostril, and sensuality steeps his full large 
lips ; the lower features of Shelley's foce are frail, feminine, flexi- 
ble Byron's head is turned upwards ; as if, having risen proudly 
above his cotcmporaries, he were daring to claim kindred, or to 
demand a contest, with a superior order of beings : Shelley s is 
half bent in reverence and humility, before some vast vision seen 
by his own eye alone. Misery erect, and striving to cover its re- 
treat under an aspect of contemptuous fury, is the permanent and 
pervading expression of Byron's countenance : - sorrow, softened 
and shaded away by hope and habit, lies like a ' hoher day ot 
still moonshine upon that of Shelley. In the portrait of Byron, 
taken at the age of nineteen, you see the unnatural age of prema- 
ture passion ; his hair is young, his dress is youthful ; but his 
face is old -.-in Shelley you see the eternal child, none the less 
that his hair is gray, and that ' sorrow seems half his immor- 
tality.' " 



JOHN KEATS. 

INlR. GiLFiLLAN* introduces this section with :-. d:3. 
cussion upon the constitutional peculiarities ascribed 
to n)en of genius ; such as nervousness of tempera- 
a^ent, idleness, vanity, irritability, and other disagree- 
able tendencies ending in ty or in ness ; one of the ties 
bein^ " poverty ; " which disease is at least not amongst 
those morbidly cherished by the patients. All that 
can be asked from the most penitent man of gemus 
is that he should humbly confess his own besettmg 
infirmities, and endeavor to hate them; and as 
respects this one infirmity at least, I never heard of 
any man (however eccentric in genius) who did other- 
wise. But what special relation has such a preface 
to Keats? His whole article occupies twelve pages; 
and six of these are allotted to this preliminary dis- 
cussion, which perhaps equally concerns every other 
xnan in the household of literature. Mr. Cxilfillan 
«cems to have been acting here on celebrated prece- 
dents. The "Ownes homines qui sese student prcpstare 
crEteris animalibus^' has long been "smoked" by a 
wicked posterity as an old hack of Sallust's fitted on 
with paste and scissors to the Catilinarian conspiracy. 

Gallery of Literary Purtraits." 



78 JOHN KEATS. 

Cicero candidly admits that he kept in his writing-desk 
an assortment of movable prefaces, beautifully fitted 
(by means of avoiding all questions but " the general 
question ") for parading, en grand costume, before any 
conceivable ' book. And Coleridge, in his early days, 
used the image of a man's " sleeping under a man- 
chineel tree," alternately with the case of Alexander's 
killing his friend Clitus, as resources for illustration 
which Providence had bountifully made inexhaustible 
in their applications. No emergency could by pos- 
sibility arise to puzzle the poet, or the orator, but one 
of these similes (please Heaven ! ) should be made to 
meet it. So long as the manchineel continued to 
blister with poisonous dews those who confided in its 
shelter, so long as Niebuhr should kindly forbear to 
prove that Alexander of Macedon was a hoax, and 
his friend Clitus a myth, so long was Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge fixed and obdurate in his determination that 
one or other of these images should come upon duty 
whenever, as a youthful writer, he found himself on 
the brink of insolvency. 

But it is less the generality of this preface, or even 
its disproportion, which fixes the eye, than the ques- 
tionableness of its particular statements. In that part 
which reviews the idleness of authors, Horace is given 
up as too notoriously indolent ; the thing, it seems, 
is past denying ; but " not so Lucretius." Indeed ! 
and how shall this be brought to proof? Perhaps the 
reader has heard of that barbarian prince, who sent 
to Europe for a large map of the world accompanied 
by the best of English razors ; and the clever use 
vhich he made of his importation was, that, first 



JOHN KEATS. 79 

cutting out with exquisite accuracy the whole ring 
fence of liis own dominions, and then doing the same 
office, with the sanip equity (barbarous or barber-ous), 
for the dominions of a hostile neighbor, next he pro- 
ceeded to weigh off the rival segments against each 
other in a pair of gold scales ; after which, of course, 
he arrived at a satisfactory algebraic equation between 
himself and his enemy. Now, upon this principle 
of comparison, if we should take any common edition 
(as the Delphin or the Variorum) of Horace and 
Lucretius, strictly shaving away all notes, prefaces, 
editorial absurdities, &c., all " flotsom " and " jetsom " 
that may have gathered like barnacles about the two 
weather-beaten hulks ; in that case we should have 
the two old files undressed, and in puris naturalibus ; 
they would be prepared for being weighed ; and, 
going to the nearest grocer's, we might then settle the 
point at once, as to which of the two had been the 
idler man. I back Horace for my part ; and it is my 
private opinion that, in the case of a quarto edition, 
the grocer would have to throw at least a two-ounce 
weight into the scale of Lucretius, before he could be 
made to draw against the other. Yet, after all, this 
would only be a collation of quantity against quantity ; 
whilst, upon a second collation of quality against qual- 
ity (I io not mean quality as regards the final merit 
of the composition, but quality as regards the difficul- 
ties in the process of composition), the difference in 
amount of labor would jppear to be as between the 
weaving of a blanket and the weaving of an exquisite 
cambric. The curiosa felicitas of Horace in his lyric 
compositions, the elaborate delicacy of workmanship 



80 JOHN KEATS. 

in his thoughts and in his style, argue a scale of labor 
that, as against any equal number of lines in Lucretius, 
would measure itself by months against days. There 
are single odes in Horace that must have cost him a 
six weeks' seclusion from the wickedness of Rome. 
Do I then question the extraordinary power of Lucre- 
tius ? On the contrary, 1 admire him as the first of 
demoniacs ; the frenzy of an earth-born or a hell-born 
inspiration ; divinity of stormy music sweeping round 
us in eddies, in order to prove that for us there could 
be nothing divine ; the grandeur of a prophet's voice 
"ising in angry gusts, by way of convincing us that 
prophets were swindlers; oracular scorn of oracles; 
frantic efforts, such as might seem reasonable in one 
who was scaling the heavens, for the purpose of 
degrading all things, making man to be the most 
abject of necessities as regarded his causes, to be the 
blindest of accidents as regarded his expectations ; 
these fierce antinomies expose a mode of insanity, but 
of an insanity affecting a sublime intellect. ^ One 
would suppose him partially mad by the savagery of 
his headlong manner. And most people who read 
Lucretius at all, are aware of the traditional story 
current in Rome, that he did actually write in a delir- 
ious state ; not under any figurative disturbance of 
brain, but under a real physical disturbance caused by 
philters administered to him without his own knowl- 
edge. But this kind of supernatural afflatus did not 
.loliver into words and metre by lirgering oscillations, 
and through processes of self-correction ; it threw 
itself forward, and precipitated its own utterance, with 
the hurrying and bounding of a cataract. It was an 



JOHN KEATS. 81 

SBstrum, K rapture, the bounding of a majnad, by 
which the muse of Lucretius lived and moved. So 
much is known by the impression about him current 
among his contemporaries : so much is evident in the 
characteristic manner of his poem, if all anecdotes 
had perished. And, upon the whole, let the propor- 
tions of power between Horace and Lucretius be what 
they may, the proportions of labor are absolutely 
incommensurable : in Horace the labor was directly 
as the power, in Lucretius inversely as the power. 
Whatsoever in Horace was best — had been obtained 
by most labor; whatsoever in Lucretius was best — by 
least. In Horace, the exquisite skill cooperated with 
the exquisite nature ; in Lucretius, the powerful nature 
disdained the skill, which, indeed, would not have 
been applicable to his theme, or to his treatment of 
it, and triumphed by means of mere precipitation of 
volume, and of headlong fury. 

Another paradox of Mr. GilfiUan's, under this head, 
is, that he classes Dr. Johnson as indolent ; and it is 
the more startling, because he does not utter it as a 
careless opinion upon which he might have been 
thrown by inconsideration, but as a concession extorted 
from him reluctantly; he had sought to evade it, but 
could not. Now, that Dr. Johnson had a morbid 
predisposition to decline labor from his scrofulous 
habit of body,2 is probable. The question for us 
however, is, not what nature prompted him to do, but 
what he did. If he had an extra difficulty to fight 
with in attempting to labor, the more was his merit 
in the known result, that he did fight with that diffi- 
culty, and that he conquered it. This is undeniable. 
6 4* 



82 JOHN KEATS. 

And the attempt to deny it presents itself in a comic 
shape, when one imagines some ancient shelf in a 
library, that has groaned for nearly a century under 
the weight of the doctor's works, demanding, " How 
say you ? Is this Sam Johnson, whose Dictionary 
alone is a load for a camel, one of those authors 
whom you call idle ? Then Heaven preserve us poor 
oppressed book-shelves from such as you will consider 
active." George III., in a compliment as happily 
turned as if it had proceeded from Louis XIV., 
expressed his opinion upon this question of the doctor's 
industry by saying, that he also should join in thinking 
Johnson too voluminous a contributor to literature, 
were it not for the extraordinary merit of his contri- 
butions. Now it would be an odd way of turning the 
royal praise into a reproach, if we should say : " Sam, 
had you been a pretty good writer, we, your country- 
men, should have held you to be also an industrious 
writer ; but, because you are a very good writer, there- 
fore we pronounce you a lazy vagabond." 

Upon other points in this discussion there is some 
room to differ with Mr. Gilfillan. For instance, with 
respect to the question of the comparative happiness 
enjoyed by men of genius, it is not necessary to argue, 
nor does it seem possible to prove, even in the case of 
any one individual poet, that, on the whole, he was 
either more happy or less happy than the average 
mass of his fellow-men ; far less could this be argued 
as to the whole class of poets. What seems really 
open to proof, is, that men of genius have a larger 
capacity of happiness, which capacity, both from 
within and from without, may be defeated in ten thou 



JOII.\ KliATS. 83 

sand ways. This seems involved in the very word 
genius. For, after all the pretended and hollow at- 
teni[)t£ to distinguish genius from talent, I shall continue 
to thinU (what heretofore I have explained) that no 
distinction in the case is tenable for a moment but this; 
namely, that genius is that mode of intellectual power 
wliicli moves in alliance with the genial nature, that is, 
with the capacities of pleasure and pain; whereas talent 
has no vestige of such an alliance, and is perfectly inde- 
pendent of all human sensibilities. Consequently, genius 
is a voice or breathing that represents the ^o?a:^ nature 
of man ; whilst, on the contrary, talent represents only 
a single function of that nature. Genius is the language 
which interprets the synthesis of the human spirit with 
the human intellect, each acting through the other; 
whilst talent speaks only from the insulated intellect. 
And hence also it is that, besides its relation to suffering 
and enjoyment, genius always implies a deeper relation 
to virtue and vice ; whereas talent has no shadow of a 
relation to vioral qualities, any more than it has to vital 
sensibilities. A man of the highest talent is often 
obtuse and below the ordinary standard of men in his 
feelings ; but no man of genius can unyoke himself from 
the society of moral perceptions that are brighter, and 
sensibilities that are more tremulous, than those of men 
in general. 

As to the e.xamples^ by which Mr. Gilfdlan supports 
his prevailing views, they will be construed by any ten 
tncusand men in ten thousand separate modes. The 
objections are so endless that it would be abusing the 
reader's time to urge them ; especially as every man 
of the ten thousand will be wrong-, and will also be 



84 JOHN KTATS. 

right, in all varieties of proportion. Two only it may 
be useful to notice as examples, involving some degree 
of error, namely, Addison and Homer. As to the first, 
the error, if an error, is one of fact only. Lord Byron 
had said of Addison, that he " died drunlc." This seems 
lo M.. Gilfillan a "horrible statement;" for which he 
supposes that no authority can exist but "a rumor circu- 
lated by an inveterate gossip," meaning Horace Wal- 
pole. But gossips usually go upon some foundation, 
broad or narrow; and, until the rumor had been" authen- 
tically put down, Mr. Gilfillan should not have pro- 
nounced it a "malignant calumny." Me this story 
caused to laugh exceedingly ; not at Addison, whose 
fine genius extorts pity and tenderness towards his in- 
firmities ; but at the characteristic misanthropy of Lord 
Byron, who chuckles as he would do over a glass of 
nectar, on this opportunity for confronting the old solemn 
legend about Addison's sending for his step-son. Lord 
Warwick, to witness the peaceful death of a Christian, 
with so rich a story as this, that he, the said Christian, 
"died drunk." Supposing that he did, the mere phys- 
ical fact of inebriation, in a stage of debility where so 
small an excess of stimulating liquor (though given 
jnedicinally) sometimes causes such an appearance, 
would uot infer the moral blame of drunkenness ; and if 
such a thing were ever said by any person present at ihe 
bed-side, I should feel next to certain that it was said in 
that spirit of exaggeration to which most men are 
tempted by circumstances unusually fitted to impress a 
startling picturesqueness upon the statement. But, 
without insisting upon Lord Byron's way of putting the 
case, I believe it is generally understood that, laf'erjy, 



JOHN KEATS. 85 

Addison gave way to habits of intemperance. He suf- 
fered, not only from his wife's dissatisfied temper, but 
also (and probably much more) from ennui. He did 
not walk one mile a day, and he ought to have walked 
ten. Dyspepsy was, no doubt, the true ground of his 
unhappiness ; and he had nothing to hope for. To rem- 
edy these evils, I have always understood that every 
day (and especially towards night) he drank too much 
of that French liquor, which, calling itself water of life, 
nine times in ten proves the water of death. He lived 
latterly at Kensington, namely, in Holland House, the 
well-known residence of the late Lord Holland ; and the 
tradition attached to the gallery in that house, is, that 
duly as the sun drew near to setting, on two tables, one 
at each end of the long ambulachrum, the right honorable 
Joseph placed, or caused to be placed, two tumblers of 
brandy, somewhat diluted with water; and those, the 
said vessels, then and there did alternately to the lips of 
him, the aforesaid Joseph, diligently apply, walking 
to and fro during the process of exhaustion, and 
dividing his attention between the two poles, arctic and 
antartic, of his evening diaulos, with the impartiality to 
be expected from a member of the Privy Council. How 
often the two " blessed bears," northern and southern, 
were replenished, entered into no affidavit that ever 
reached me. But so much I have always understood, 
that in the gallery of Holland House, the ex-secretary 
of state caught a decided hiccup, which never after- 
wards subsided. In all this there would have been 
little to shock people, had it not been for the syco- 
phancy which ascribed to Addison a religious reputa- 
tion such as he neither merited nor wished to claim. 



86 JOHN KEATS. 

But one penal reaction of mendacious adulation, for 
him who is weak enough to accept it, must ever be 
to impose restraints upon his own conduct, which 
otherwise he would have been free to decline. How 
lightly would Sir Koger de Coverley have thought of 
a little sotting in any honest gentleman of right po. i- 
tics ! And Addison would not, in that age, and as to 
that point, have carried his scrupulosity higher than 
his own Sir Roger. But such knaves as he who had 
complimented Addison with the praise of having 
written " no line which, dying, he could wish to blot," 
whereas, in fact, Addison started in life by publishing 
a translation of Petronius Arbiter, had painfully coerced 
his free agency. This knave, I very much fear, was 
Tickell the first ; and the result of his knavery was, to 
win for Addison a disagreeable sanctimonious reputation 
that was, first, founded in lies ; second, that painfully 
limited Addison's free agency ; and, thirdly, that prepared 
insult 3 to his memory, since it pointed a censorious eye 
upon those things, viewed as the acts of a demure pre- 
tender to piety, which would else have passed without 
notice as the most venial of frailties in a layman. 

Something I had to say also upon Homer, who 
mingles amongst the examples cited by Mr. Gilfillan, 
of apparent happiness connected with genius. But, for 
want of room,^ I forbear to go further, than to lodge 
my protest against imputing to Homer as any personal 
merit, what belongs altogether to the stage of society in 
which he lived. " They," says Mr. Gilfillan, speaking 
of the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey," " are the healthiest 
of works. There are in them no suUenness, no quer- 
ulous complaint, not one personal allusion." No ; bu4 



JOHN KEATS. 87 

how could there have been ? Subjective poetry had not 
an existence in those days. Not only the powers for 
introverting the eye upon the spectator, as himself, the 
spectacidum, were then undeveloped and inconceivable, 
but the sympathies did not exist to which such an inno- 
vation could have appealed. Besides, and partly from 
the same cause, even as objects, the human feelings and 
affections were too hroadly and grossly distinguished, 
had not reached even the infancy of that stage in which 
the passions begin their process of intermodification, nor 
could have reached it, from the simplicity of social life, 
as well as from the barbarism of the Greek religion. 
The author of the " Iliad," or even of the " Odyssey " 
(though doubtless a product of a later period), could not 
have been " unhealthy," or " sullen," or " querulous," 
from any cause, except psora or elephantiasis, or scarcity 
of beef, or similar afflictions with which it is quite im- 
possible to inoculate poetry. The metrical romances of 
the middle ages have the same shivering character of 
starvation, as to the inner life of man ; and, if that con- 
stitutes a meritorious distinction, no man ought to be 
excused for wanting what it is so easy to obtain by 
simple neglect of culture. On the same principle, a 
cannibal, if truculently indiscriminate in his horrid diet, 
might win sentimental praises for his temperance , 
others were picking and choosing, miserable epicures ! 
but he, the saint upon earth, cared not what he ate ; any 
joint satisfied his moderate desires ; shoulder of man, leg 
of child ; anything, in fact, that was nearest at hand, so 
long as it was good, wholesome human flesh ; and the 
more plainly dressed the better. 

But these topics, so various and so fruitful, I toich 



S8 



JOHN KEATS. 



only because they are introduced, amongst many others, 
by Mr, Gilfillan. Separately viewed, some of these 
would be more attractive than any merely personal in- 
terest connected with Keats. His biography, stripped, 
of its false coloring, offers little to win attention ; for he 
was not the victim of any systematic malignity, as has 
been represented. He met, as I have understood, with 
imusua. kindness from his liberal publishers, Messrs. 
Taylor and Hessey. He met with unusual severity 
from a cynical reviewer, the late Mr. Gifford, then 
editor of The Quarterly Review. The story ran, thai 
this article of Mr. G.'s had killed Keats; upon which 
with natural astonishment. Lord Byron thus commentea 
in the 1 1th canto of Don Juan : — 

" John Keats who was killed off by one critique, 
Just as he really promised something great, 

If not intelligible, — without Greek, 

Contrived to talk about the gods of late. 

Much as they might have been supposed to speak. 
Poor fellow ! his was an untoward fate : 

'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle. 

Should let itself be snuffed out by an Article." 

Strange, indeed ! and the friends who honor Keat^ 
memory, should not lend themselves to a story so do 
grading. He died, I believe, of pulmonary consumption 
and would have died of it, probably, under any circum 
stances of prosperity as a poet. Doubtless, in a condition 
of languishing decay, slight causes of irritation act 
powerfully. But it is«hardly conceivable that one ebul- 
lition of splenetic bad feeling, in a case so proverbially 
open to revision as the pretensions of a poet, could have 
overtxirown any masculine life, unless where that life 



JOHN KEATS. 89 

had already been irrecoverally undermined by sickness. 
As a man, and viewed in relation to social objects, 
Keats was nothing. It was as mere an affectation when 
he talked with apparent zeal of liberty, or human rights, 
or human prospects, as is the hollow enthusiasm which 
many people jirofess for music, or most poets for external 
nature. For these things Keats fancied that he cared ; 
but in reality he cared not at all. Upon them, or any 
of their aspects, he had thought too little, and too in- 
determinately, to feel for them as personal concerns. 
Whereas Shelley, from his earliest days, was mastered 
and shaken by the great moving realities of life, as a 
prophet is by the burden of wrath or of promise which 
he has been commissioned to reveal. Had there been 
no such thing as literature, Keats would have dwindled 
into a cipher. Shelley, in the same event, would hardly 
have lost one plume from his crest. It is in relation to 
literature, and to the boundless questions as to the true 
and the false arising out of literature and poetry, that 
Keats challenges a fluctuating interest ; sometimes an 
interest of strong disgust, sometimes of deep admiration. 
There is not, I believe, a case on record throughout 
European literature, where feelings so repulsive of each 
other have centred in the same individual. The very 
midsummer madness of affectation, of false vapory 
sentiment, and of fantastic effeminacy, seemed to me 
combined m Keats' Endymion, when I first saw it near 
the close of 1821. The Italian poet, Marino, had been 
reputed the greatest master of gossamery affectation in 
Europe. But Ms conceits showed the palest of rosy 
blushes by the side of Keats' bloody crimson. Natu- 
'ally, I was discouraged from looking further But 



90 JOHN KEATS. 

about a week later, by pure accident, my eye fell upoa 
his Hyperion. The first feeling was that of incredulity 
that the two poems could, under change of circum- 
stances or lapse of time, have emanated from the same 
mind. The ETidymion displays absolutely the most 
shocking revolt against good sense and just feeling, that 
all literature does now, or ever can furnish. The Hy- 
perion, as Mr. GilfiUan truly says, " is the greatest of 
poetical torsos." The first belongs essentially to the 
vilest collections of wax-work filigree, or gilt ginger- 
bread. The other presents the majesty, the austere 
beauty, and the simplicity of Grecian temples enriched 
with Grecian sculpture. 

We have in this country a word, namely, the word 
Folly, which has a technical appropriation to the case of 
fantastic buildings. Any building is called " a folly," 6 
which mimics purposes incapable of being realized, and 
makes a promise to the eye which it cannot keep to the 
experience. The most impressive illustration of this 
idea, which modern times have seen, was, undoubtedly, 
the ice-palace of the Empress Elizabeth ^ — 

" That most magnificent and mighty freak," 

which, about eighty years ago, was called up from the 
depths of winter by 

" The imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ." 

Winter and the Czarina were, in this architecture, fel- 
low-laborers. She, by her servants, furnished the blocks 
of ice, hewed them, dressed them, laid them : winter 
furnished the cement, by freezing them together. The 
palace has lorig melted back into water; and the poet 



JOHN KEATS. 



91 



who described it best, namely, Cowper, is not so much 
read in this age, except by the religious. It will, there- 
fore, be a sort of resurrection for both the palace and 
the poet, if I cite his description of this gorgeous folly. 
It is a passage in which Cowper assumes so much of a 
Mib /-lie tone, that, of the two, it is better to have read 
his lasting description, than to have seen, with bodily 
eyes the fleeting reality. The poet is apostrophizing 
the Empress Elizabeth. 

" No forest fell, 



When thou -wouldst build : no quarry sent its stores 
To enrich thy walls : but thou didst hew the floods 
And make thy marble of the glassy wave. 



Silently as a dream the fabric rose : 

No sound of hammer or of saw was there : 

Ice upon ice, the well adjusted parts 

Were soon conjoined, nor other cement asked 

Than water interfused to make them one. 

Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues, 

Illumined every side ; a watery light 

Gleamed through the clear transparency, that seemed 

Another moon new-risen : 



Nor wanted aught within 

That royal residence might well befit 

For grandeur or for use. Long weavy wreaths 

Of flowers, that feared no enemy but warmth, 

Blushed on the panels. Mirror needed none, 

Where all was vitreous : but in order due 

Convivial table and commodious seat 

(What seemed at least commodious seat) were there 

Sofa, and couch, and high-built throne august. 

The same lubricity was found in all, 



92 JOHN KEATS. 

And all was moist to the warm touch ; a scene 
Of evanescent glory, once a stream, 
And soon to slide into a stream again." 

The poet concludes by viewing the whole as an ui> 
intentional stroke of satire by the Czarina, 

^—— " On her own estate, 



On human grandeur, and the courts of kings. 

'T was transient in its nature, as in show 

'T was durable ; as worthless, as it seemed 

Intrinsically precious : to the foot 

Treacherous and false, — it smiled, and it was cold." 

Looking at this imperial plaything of ice in the 
month of March, and recollecting that in May all its 
crystal arcades would be weeping away into vernal 
brooks, one would have been disposed to mourn over a 
beauty so frail, and to marvel at a frailty so elaborate. 
Yet still there was some proportion observed : the saloons 
were limited in number, though not limited in splendor. 
It was a petit Trianon. But what if, like Versailles 
this glittering bauble, to which all the science of Europe 
could not have secured a passport into June, had con- 
tained six thousand separate rooms ? A " folly " on so 
gigantic a scale would have moved every man to indig- 
nation. For all that could be had, the beauty to the eye, 
and the gratification to the fancy, in seeing water tor- 
tured into every form of solidity, resulted from two or 
three suites of rooms, as fully as from a thousand. 

Now, such a folly, as would have been the Czarina's, 
if executed upon the scale of Versailles, or of the new 
palace at St. Petersburg, was the Endymion : a gigantic 
edifice (for its tortuous engimas of thought multiplied 
every line of the four thousand into fifty) reared upon a 



JOUX KEATS. 



93 



basis slighter and less apprehensible than moonshine. 
As reasonably, and as hopefully in regard to human 
-sympathies, might a man undertake an epic poem upon 
tiie loves of two butterflies. The modes of existence 
in the two parties to the love-fable of the Endymion, 
their relations to each other and to us, their prospects 
finaKy, and the obstacles to the instant realization of 
these prospects, — all these things are more vague and 
incomprehensible than the reveries of an oyster. Still 
the unhappy subject, and its unhappy expansion, must 
be laid to the account of childish years and childish in- 
experience. But there is another fault in Keats, of the 
first magnitude, which youth does not palliate, which 
youth even aggravates. This lies in the most shocking 
abuse of his mother-tongue. If there, is one thing in 
this world that, next after the flag of his country and its 
spotless honor, should be wholly in the eyes of a young 
poet, — it is the langiiage of his country. He should 
spend the third part of his life in studying this language, 
and cultivating its total resources. He should be willing 
to pluck out his right eye, or to circumnavigate the globe, 
if by such a sacrifice, if by such an exertion, he could 
attain to greater purity, precision, compass, or idiomatic 
energy of diction. This if he were even a Kalmuck 
Tartar, who by the way/ms the good feeling and patriotism 
to pride himself upon his beastly language.'? But 
Keats was an Englishman ; Keats had the honor to 
speak the language of Chaucer, Shakspeare, Bacon, 
Milton, Newton. The more awful was the obligation 
of his allegiance. , And yet upon this mother tongue, 
upon this English language, has Keats trampled as with 
the hoofs of a bufTalo. With its syntax, wUh its pros- 



94 JOHN KEATS. 

ody, with its idiom, he has played such fantastic tricks 
as could enter only into the heart of a barbarian, and 
for which only the anarchy of Chaos could furnish a 
forgiving audience. Verily it required the Hyperion to 
weigh against the deep treason of these unparalleled 
jffences. 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 80. 

There is one peculiarity about Lucretius which, even in the ab- 
sence of all anecdotes to that eflfect, "would have led an observing 
reader to suspect some unsoundness in his brain. It is this, and 
it lies in his manner. In all poetic enthusiasm, however grand 
and sweeping may be its compass, so long as it is healthy and nat- 
ural, there is a principle of self-restoration in the opposite direc- 
tion : there is a counter state of repose, a compensatory state, as 
in the tides of the sea, which tends continually to reestablish the 
equipoise. The lull is no less intense than the fury of commotion. 
But in Lucretius there is no lull. Nor would thei'e seem to be any, 
were it not for two accidents : 1st, the occasional pause in his rav- 
ing tone enforced by the interruption of an episode ; 2dly, the 
restraints (or at least the susjiensions) imposed upon him by tlie dif- 
ficulties of argument conducted in verse. To dispute metrically, 
IS as embarrassing as to run or dance when knee-deep in sand. 
Else, and apart from these counteractions, the motion of the style 
is not only stormy, but self-kindling and continually accelerated. 

Note 2. Page 81. 

" Habit of body : " but much more from mismanagement of 
his body. Dr. Johnson tampered with medical studies, and fancied 
himself learned enough to prescribe for his female correspondents. 
Tht affectionateness with which he sometimes did this is interest- 
ing ; tut his ignorance of the subject is not the less apparent. In 

(95) 



96 JOHN KEATS. 

his own case he had the merit of one heroic self-conquest ; he 
■weaned himself from wine, having once become convinced that it 
■was injurious. But he never brought himself to take regular 
exercise. He ate too much at all times of his life. And in another 
point, he betrayed a thoughtlessness, which (though really com- 
mon as laughter) is yet extravagantly childish. Everybody knows 
that Dr. Johnson was all his life reproaching himself with lying 
too long in bed. Always he was sinning (for he thought it a 
Bin) ; always he was repenting , always he was vainly endeavoring 
to reform. But why vainly ? Cannot a resolute man in six weeks 
bring himself to rise at a?iy hour of the twenty-four? Certainly 
he can ; but not without appropriate means. Now the Doctor rose 
about eleven, A. m. This, he fancied, was shocking ; he was de- 
termined to rise at eight, or at seven. Very well ; why not ? But 
will it be credited that the one sole change occurring to the Doc- 
tor's mind, was to take a flying leap backwards from eleven to 
eight, without any corresponding leap at the other terminus of his 
sleep? To rise at eight instead of eleven, presupposes that a man 
goes off to bed at twelve instead of three. Yet this recondite 
truth never to his dying day dawned on Dr. Johnson's mind. 
The conscientious man continued to offend ; continued to repent ; 
continued to pave a disagreeable place with good intentions, and 
daily resolutions of amendment ; but at length died full of years, 
without having once seen the sun rise, except in some Homeric 
description, written (as Mr. Fynes Clifton makes it probable) 
thirty centuries before. The fact of the sun's rising at all, the 
Doctor adopted as a point of faith, and by no means of personal 
knowledge, from an insinuation to that effect in the most ancient 
of Greek books. 

Note 3. Page 83. 

One of these examples is equivocal, in a way that Mr. Gilfillan 
is apparently not aware of. He cites Tickell, " whose very name " 
(he says) " savors of laughter," as being, " in foct, a very happy 
fellow." In the first place, Tickell would have been likely to" 
" square " at Mr. Gilfillan for that liberty taken with his name ; or 
might even, in Falstaff 's language, have tried to " tickle his ca- 
tastrophe." It is a ticklish thing to lark with honest men's names 



NOTES. 97 

But, secondly, which Tickell ? For there are tTvo at the least in 
the field of English literature ; and if one of them was " very 
happy," the chances are, according to D. Bernoulli and De Moivre, 
that the other was particularly miserable. The first Tickell, who 
may be described as Addison's Tickell, never tickled anything, that 
I know of, except Addison's vanity. But Tickell the second, who 
came into working order about fifty years later, was really a very 
pleasant fellow. In the time of Burke he diverted the whole na- 
tion by his poem of " Anticipation," in which he anticipated and 
dramatically rehearsed the course of a whole parliamentary de- 
bate (on the king's speech), which did not take place till a week 
or two afterwards. Such a mimicry was easy enough ; but thai 
did not prevent its fidelity and characteristic truth from delighting 
the political world. 

Note 4. Page 86. 

For the same reason, I refrain from noticing the pretensions of 
Savage. Mr. Gilfillan gives us to understand, that not from 
want of room, but of time, he does not (which else he could) 
prove him to be the man he pretended to be. For my own part, I 
believe Savage to have been the vilest of swindlers ; and in these 
days, under the surveillance of an active police, he would have lost 
the chance which he earned of being hanged, by having long pre- 
viously been transported to the plantations. How can Mr. Gilfil- 
lan allow himself, in a case of this nature, to speak of " universal 
impression " (if it had really existed) as any separate ground of 
credibility for Savage's tale ? When the public have no access at 
all to sound means of judging, what matters it in which direction 
their " impression " lies, or how many thousands swell the belief, 
for which not one of all these thousands has anything like a reason 
to offer ? 

Note 5. Page 90. 

'• A folly." We English limit the application of this term to 
buildings ; but the idea might as fitly be illustrated in other ob- 
jects. For instance, the famous galley presented to one of the 
Ptolemies, which offered the luxurious accommodations of capital 



^S JOHN KEATS. 

cities, but required a little army of four thousand men to row i., 
whilst its draught of water was too great to allow of its often ap- 
proaching the shore ; this was "a folly" in our English sense. 
So again was the Macedonian phalanx. The Roman legion could 
form upon a7iy ground ; it was a true working tool. But the pha- 
lanx was too fine and showy for use. It required for its manoeu- 
vring a sort of opera stage, or a select bowling-green, such as few 
fields of battle offered. 

Note 6. Page 90. 

I had written the "Empress Catherine;" but, on second 
thoughts, it occurred to me that the " mighty freak " was, in fact, 
due to the Empress Elizabeth. There is, however, a freak con- 
nected with ice, not quite so "mighty," but quite as autocratic, 
and even more feminine in its caprice, which belongs exclusively 
to the Empress Catherine. A lady had engaged the affections of 
some young nobleman, who was regarded favorably by the impe- 
rial eye. No pretext offered itself for interdicting the marriage ; 
but, by way of freezing it a little at the outset, the Czarina coupled 
with her permission this condition — that the wedding night should 
be passed by the young couple on a mattress of her gift. The 
mattress turned out to be a block of ice, elegantly cut, by the 
court upholsterer, into the likeness of a well-stuffed Parisian mat- 
tress. One pities the poor bride, whilst it is difficult to avoid 
laughing in the midst of one's sympathy. But it is to be hoped 
that no ukase was issued against spreading seven Turkey carpets, 
by way of under-blankets, over this amiable nuptial present. 
Amongst others who have noticed the story, is Captain Colville 
Frankland, of the navy. 

Note 7. Page 93. 

Bergmann, the German traveller, in his account of his long 
rambles and residence amongst the Kalmucks, makes us acquainted 
with the delirious vanity which possesses these demi-savages. 
Their notion is, that excellence of every kind, perfection in the 
least things as in the greatest, is briefly expressed by calling it 
Kalmuckish. Accordingly, their hideous language, and their vast 



NOTES. 



99 



national poem (doubtless equally hideous), they hold to be the 
immediate gifts of inspiration : and for this I honor them, as each 
generation learns both from the lips of their mothers. This great 
poem, by the way, measures (if I remember) seventeen English 
miles in length ; but the most learned man amongst them, in fact 
a monster of erudition, never read further than the eighth mile- 
stone. What he could repeat by heart was little more than a mde 
and a half; and, indeed, that was found too much for the choleric 
part of his audience. Even the Kalmuck face, which to us foolish 
Europeans looks so unnecessarily flat and ogre-like, these honest 
Tartars have ascertained to be the pure classical model of human 
beaoty,- which, in fact, it is, upon the principle of those people 
who hold that the chief use of a face is - to frighten ones enemy. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITTT.* 

This book accomplishes a retribution which the world 
has waited for through seventy and odd years. Wel- 
come at any rate by its purpose, it is trebly welcome 
by its execution, to all hearts that linger indulgently 
over the frailties of a national favorite once wickedly 
exaggerated — to all hearts that brood indignantly over 
the powers of that favorite once maliciously under- 
valued. 

A man of original genius, shown to us as revolving 
through the leisurely stages of a biographical memoir, 
lays open, to readers prepared for sympathy, two 
separate theatres of interest : one in his personal 
career; the other in his works and his intellectual 
development. Both unfold together; and each bor- 
rows a secondary interest from the other : the life 
from the recollection of the works — the works from 
the joy and sorrow of the life. There have, indeed, 
been authors whose great creations, severely precon- 
ceived in a region of thought transcendent to all 
impulses of earth, would have been pretty nearly 
what they are under any possible changes in the 



'Tlie Life aivl Adventures of Goldsmitli, by Jolm Forster. 

(101) 



102 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

dramatic arrangement of their lives. Happy or not 
happy — gay or sad — these authors would equally 
have fulfilled a mission too solemn and too stern in 
its obligations to suffer any warping from ".hance, or 
to bend before the accidents of life, whether dressed 
in sunshine or in wintry gloom. But generally this 
is otherwise. Children of Paradise, like the Miltons 
of our planet, have the privilege of stars — to " dwell 
apart." But the children of flesh, whose pulses beat 
too sympathetically with the agitations of mother- 
earth, cannot sequester themselves in that way.- They 
walk in no such altitudes, but at elevations easily 
reached by ground-winds of humble calamity. And 
from that cup of sorrow, which upon all lips is pressed 
in some proportion, they must submit, by the very 
tenure on which they hold their gifts, to drink, if not 
more profoundly than others, yet always with more 
peril to the accomplishment of their earthly mission. 

Amongst this household of children too tremulously 
associated to the fluctuations of earth, stands forward 
conspicuously Oliver Goldsmith. And there is a belief 
current, that he was conspicuous, not only in the 
.sense of being constitutionally flexible to the impres- 
sions of sorrow and adversity, in case they had hap- 
pened to occur, but also that he really had more than 
his share of those afflictions. We are disposed to 
think that this was not so. Our trust is, that Gold- 
smith lived upon the whole a life which, though 
troubled, was one of average enjoyment. Unques- 
tionably, when reading at midnight, and in the middle 
watch of a century which he never reached, this 
record ot one so amiable, so guileless, so upright, or 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 103 

sccnung- to be otherwise for a moment only in the 
eyes of those who did not know his difficulties, nor 
could have understood them ; when recurring also to 
his admirable genius, to the sweet natural gayety of 
his oftentimes pathetic humor, and to the varied ac- 
complishments from talent or erudition, by which he 
gave eflect to endowments so fascinating — one cannot 
but sorrow over the strife which he sustained, and 
over the wrong by which he suffered. A few natural 
tears one sheds at the rehearsal of so much contumely 
from fools, which he stood under unresistingly as one* 
bareheaded under a hail-storm ; ^ and worse to bear 
than the scorn of fools, were the imperfect sympathy 
and jealous, self-distrusting esteem which he received 
to the last from friends. Doubtless he suffered much 
wrong ; but so, in one way or other, do most men : 
he suffered also this special wrong, that in his life- 
time he never was fully appreciated by any one friend 
— something of a counter-movement ever mingled 
WMth praise for Min — he never saw himself enthroned 
in the heart of any young and fervent admirer, and 
he w^as always overshadowed by men less deeply 
genial, though more showy than himself; but these 
things happen, and have happened, to myriads amongst 
the benefactors of earth. Their names ascend in 
songs of thankful commemoration, but not until the 
ears are deaf that would have thrilled to the music. 
And these were the heaviest of Goldsmith's afflictions : 
what are likely to be thought such, namely, the battles 
which he fought for his daily bread, we do not numbei 
amongst them. To struggle is not to sufTer. Heaven 
grants to few of us a life of untroubled prosperity, 



11)4 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

and grants it least of all to its favorites. Charles I. 
carried, as it was thought by a keen Italian judge of 
physiognomy, a predestination to misery written in 
his features. And it is probable that if any Cornelius 
Agrippa had then been living, to show him in early 
life the strife, the bloodshed, the triumphs of enemies, 
the treacheries of friends, the separation forever from 
the familiar faces of his hearth, which darkened the 
years from 1642 to 1649, he would have said — 
" Prophet of woe ! if I bear to live through this vista 
of seven years, it is because at the further end of it 
thou showest me the consolation of a scaffold." And 
yet our persuasion is, that in the midst of its deadly 
agitations and its torments of suspense, probably 
enough by the energies of hope, or even of anxiety 
which exalted it, that period of bitter conflict was 
found by the king a more ennobling life than he would, 
have found in the torpor of a prosperity too profound. 
To be cloj^ed perpetually is a worse fate than some- 
times to stand within the vestibule of starvation ; and 
we need go no further than the confidential letters 
of the court ladies of this and other countries to satisfy 
ourselves how much worse in its effects upon happi- 
ness than any condition of alarm and peril, is the 
lethargic repose of luxury too monotonous, and of 
security too absolute. If, therefore, Goldsmith's life 
had been one of continual struggle, it would not follow 
that it had therefore sunk below the standard of ordi- 
nary happiness. But the life-struggle of Goldsmith, 
though severe enough (after all allowances) to chal- 
lenge a feeling of tender compassion, was not in such 
a degree "severe as has been represented. ^ He en 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 105 

,uyed two great immunities from suffering that have 
been much overlooked ; and such immunities that, ia 
our opinion, four in five of all the people ever con- 
nected with Goldsmith's works, as publishers, printers, 
compositors (that is, men taken at random), have very 
probably suffered more, upon the whole, than he. 
The immunities were these: — 1st, From any bodily 
taint of low spirits. He had a constitutional gayety 
of heart; an elastic hilarity; and, as he himself ex- 
presses it, " a knack of hoping " — which knack could 
not be bought with Ormus and with Ind, nor hired for 
a day with the peacock-throne of Delhi. How easy 
was it to bear the brutal affront of being to his face 
described as " Doctor minor" when one hour or less 
would dismiss the Doctor major, so invidiously con- 
tradistinguished from himself, to a struggle with scrof- 
ulous melancholy ; whilst he, if returning to solitude 
and a garret, was returning also to habitual cheerful- 
ness. There lay one immunity, beyond all price, 
from a mode of strife to which others, by a large 
majority, are doomed — strife with bodily wretched- 
ness. Another immunity he had of almost equal 
value, and yet almost equally forgotten by his biog- 
raphers, namely, from the responsibilities of a family. 
Wife and children he had not. They it is that, being 
a man's chief blessings, create also for him the dead- 
liest of his anxieties, that stuff his pillow with thorns, 
that surround his daily path with snares. Suppose the 
case of a man who has helpless dependents of this 
claos upon himself summoned to face some sudden 
failure of his resources : how shattering to the power 
of exertion, and, above all, of exertion by an organ 

5* 



106 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

SO delicate as the creative intellect, dealing with sub- 
jects so coy as those of imaginative sensibility, to know 
that instant ruin attends his failure ! Success in such 
paths of literature might at the best be doubtful ; 
but success is impossible, with any powers whatever, 
unless in a genial state of those powers ; and this 
geniality is to be sustained, in the case supposed, whilst 
the eyes are fixed upon the most frightful of abysses 
yawning beneath his feet. He is to win his inspira- 
tion for poetry or romance from the prelusive cries 
of infants clamoring for daily bread. Now, on the 
other hand, in the case of an extremity equally sudden 
alighting on the head of a man in Goldsmith's posi- 
tion, having no burden to support but the trivial one 
of his own personal needs, the resources are endless 
for gaining time enough to look around. Suppose 
him ejected from his lodgings ; let him walk into the 
country, with a pencil and a sheet of paper ; there, 
sitting under a hay-stack for one morning, he may 
produce what will pay his expenses for a week : a 
day's labor will carry the sustenance of ten days. 
Poor may be the trade of authorship, but it is as good 
as that of a slave in Brazil, whose one hour's work 
will defray the twenty-four hours' living. As a reader, 
or corrector of proofs, a good Latin and French scholar 
(like Goldsmith) would always have enjoyed a pref- 
erence, we presume, at any eminent printing-office. 
This again would have given him time for looking 
round ; or, he might perhaps have obtained the same 
advantage for deliberation from some confidential 
friend's hospitality. In short, Goldsmith enjoyed the 
two privileges, one subjective — the other objective-- 



OLIVER GOLDSBU'^H. 107 

which, when uniting' in the same man, would prove 
more than a match for all difficulties that could arise in 
a literary career to him who was at once a man of 
genius so popular, of talents so versatile, of reading so 
various, and of opportunities so large for still more ex- 
tended reading. The subjective privilege lay in his 
huoyanc}^ of animal spirits ; the objective in his free- 
dom frv.n responsibilities. Goldsmith wanted very little 
more than DioL;enes ; now Diogenes could only have 
been robbed of his tub ; ^ which perhaps Vv^as about as 
big as most of poor Goldsmith's sitting-rooms, and far 
better ventilated. So that the liability of these two 
men cynic and non-cynic, to the kicks of fortune, was 
pretty much on a par ; whilst Goldsmith had the advan- 
tage of a better temper for bearing them, though cer- 
tainly Diogenes had the better climate for soothing his 
temper. 

But it may be imagined, that if Goldsmith were thus 
fprtunately equipped for authorship, on the other hand, 
the position of literature, as a money-making resource, 
WIS in Goldsmith's days less advantageous than ours. 
We are not of that opinion ; and the representation by 
which Mr. Forster endeavors to sustain it seems to us 
a showy but untenable refinement. The outline of his 
argument is, that the aristocratic patron had, in Gold- 
smith's day, by the progress of society, disappeared ; he 
belonged to the past — that the mercenary publisher had 
taken his place — he represented the ugly present — but 
I hat the great reading public (that true and equitable 
pnt'on, as some fancy) had not yet matured its means of 
effectual action upon literature ; this reading public 
virtually, perhaps, belonged to the future. All this we 



108 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Steadfastly resist. No doubt the old full-blown patron 
€71 grand costume, with his heraldic bearings ernblaziined 
at the head of the Dedication, was dying out, like the 
golden pippin. But he still lingered in sheltered situa- 
tions. And part of the machinery by wliich patronage 
had ever moved, namely, using influence for obtaining 
subscriptions, was still in capital working order, — a fact 
M'hich we know from Goldsmith himself (see the L.l- 
quiry) ; for he tells us that a popular mode of publication 
amongst bad authors, and certainly it needed no pub- 
lisher's countersign, was by means of subscription 
papers : upon which, as we believe, a considerable instal- 
ment was usually paid down when as yet the book 
existed only by way of title-page, supposing that the 
whole sum were not even paid up. Then as to the 
publisher (a nuisance, we dare say, in all stages of his 
Natural History), he could not have been a weed firs* 
springing up in Goldsmith's time, but must always havp 
been an indispensable broker or middleman between thi- 
author and the world. In the days even of Horace ani 
Martial the hooV-seller (bibliopola) clearly acted as book 
publisher. Amongst other passages proving this, ano 
showing undeniably that Martial at least had sold the 
copyright of his work to his publisher, is one arguin' 
pretty certainly that the price of a gay drawing-roon 
copy must have been hard upon £1. lis. Qd. Did eve 
any man hear the like ? A New York newspaper woulr* 
have been too happy to pirate the v.hole of Martia 
had he been three times as big, and would have en 
gaged to drive the bankrupt publisher into a madhousi 
for twopence. Now, it cannot be supposed that Mar 
tial, a gay, light-hearted fellow, willing to let the public 



OLIVER GOLDSMI'IH. 109 

have his book for a shilling', or perhaps for love, had 
been the person to put that ridiculous price upon it. 
We may conclude that it was the publisher. As to 
the public, that respectable character must always 
have presided over the true and final court of appeal, 
silently defying- alike the prestige of patronage and the 
intriguing mysteries of publishing. Lordly patronage 
might fill the sails of one edition, and masterly pub- 
lishing of three. But the books that ran contagiously 
through the educated circles, or that lingered amongst 
them for a generation, must have owed their success 
to the unbiased feelings of the reader — not overawed 
by authority, not mystified by artifice. Varying, how- 
ever, in whatever proportion as to power, the three 
possible parties to an act of publication will always be 
seen intermittingly at work — the voluptuous self-in- 
dulging public, and the insidious publisher, of course • 
but even the brow-beating patron still exists in a nevv 
avatar. Formerly he made his descent upon earth in 
the shape of Dedicatee ; and it is true that this august 
being, to whom dedications burned incense upon an 
altar, withdrew into sunset and twilight during Gold- 
smith's period ; but he still revisits the glimpses of the 
moon in the shape of author. When the auctoritas of 
a peer could no longer sell a book by standing at the 
head of a dedication, it lost none of its power when 
standing on the title-page as the author. Vast cata- 
logues might be composed of books and pamphlets that 
have owed a transient success to no other cause on 
earth than the sonorous title, or the distinguished posi- 
tion of those who wrote them. Ceasing to patronize 
other people's books, the grandee has still power to 



110 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

patronize his own. All celebrities have this form ot 
patronage. And, for instance, had the boy Jones * 
(otherwise called Inigo Jones) possessed enough of 
book-making skill to forge a plausible curtain-lecture, 
as overheard by himself when concealed in Her Maj- 
esty's bed-room, ten steam-presses, working day and 
night, would not have supplied the public demand ; and 
even Her Majesty must herself have sent for a large 
paper copy, were it only to keep herself au courant 
of English literature. In short, first, the extrinsic* 
patronage of books ; secondly, the self-patronage of 
books in right of their merits ; and, thirdly, the artifi- 
cial machineries for difiiising the knowledge of their 
existence, are three forces, in current literature that 
ever have existed and must exist, in some imperfect 
degree. Horace recognizes them in his 

" Non Di, non homiues, non concessere columnoe." 

The Di are the paramount public, arbitrating finally 
on the fates of books, and generally on some just 
ground of judgment, though it may be fearfully exag- 
gerated on' the scale of importance. The homines are 
the publishers ; and a sad homo the publisher some- 
times is, particularly when he commits insolvency. 
But the columncB are those pillars of state, the grandees 
of our own age, or any other patrons, that support the 
golden canopy of our transitory pomps, and thus shed 
an alien glory of colored light from above upon the 
books falling within that privileged area. 

We are not, therefore, of Mr. Forster's opinion, that 
Goldsmith fell upon an age less favorable fo the ex- 
pansion of literary powers, or to the attainment of 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Ill 

literary distinction, than any other. The patron might 
be a tradition— but the public was not therefore a 
prophecy. My lord's trumpets had ceased to sound, 
but the vox pnpuli was not therefore muffled. The 
means, indeed, of diffusive advertisement and of rapid 
circulation, the combinations of readers into reading 
societies, and of roads into iron net-works, were 
as yet imperfectly developed. These gave a potent 
stimulus to periodic literature. And a still more 
operative difference between ourselves and them is — 
that a new class of people has since then entered our 
reading public, namely, the class of artisans and of all 
below the gentry, which (taken generally) was in 
Goldsmith's day a cipher, as regarded any real en- 
couragement to literature. In our days, if The Vicar 
of Wakefield had been published as a Christmas tale, 
it would have produced a fortune to the writer. In 
Goldsmith's time, few below the gentry were readers 
on any large scale. So far there really loas a disad 
vantage. But it was a disadvantage which applied 
chiefly to novels. The new influx of readers in oui 
times, the collateral afiluents into the main stream 
from the mechanic and provincial sections of our 
population, which have centupled the volume of the 
original current, cannot be held as telling favorably 
upon literature, or telling at all, except in the depart-- 
ments of popularized science, of religion, of fictitious 
tales and of journalism. To be a reader, is no longer, 
as once it was, to be of a meditative turn. To be a 
very popular author is no longer that honorary distinc- 
tion which once it might have been amongst a more 
elevated because more select body of readeis. We 



112 OLIVER fiOLDSiuITH. 

do not say this invidiously, or with any special refer- 
ence. But it is evident that writers and readers must 
often act and reiict for reciprocal degradation. A 
writer of this day, either in France or England, to be 
very popular, must be a story-teller ; which is a func- 
tion ot literature neither very noble in itself, nor, 
secondly, tending to permanence. All novels what- 
ever, the best equally with the worst, have faded almost 
with the generation that produced them. This is a 
curse written as a superscription above the whole class. 
The modes of combining characters, the particular 
objects selected for sympathy, the diction, and often 
the manners,^ hold up an imperfect mirror to any 
generation that is not their own. And the reader of 
novels belonging to an obsolete era, whilst acknowl- 
edging the skill of the groupings, or the beauty of the 
situations, misses the echo to that particular revelation 
of human nature which has met him in the social 
aspects of his own day ; or too often he is perplexed 
by an expression which, having dropped into a lower 
use, disturbs the unity of the impression, or is revolted 
by a coarse sentiment, which increasing refinement 
Has made unsuitable to the sex or to the rank of the 
character. How bestial and degrading at this day 
seem many of the scenes in Smollett ! How coarse 
are the ideals of Fielding ! — bis odious Squire West- 
ern, his odious Tom Jones ! What a gallery of his- 
trionic masqueraders is thrown open in the novels of 
Richardson, powerful as they were once found by the 
two leading nations of the earth. A popular writer, 
therefore, who, in order to be popular, must speak 
through novels, speaks to what is least permanent \\\ 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 115 

human sensibilities. That is already to be se.f-de 
ijraded. Secondly, because the novel-reading class ii 
br far the most comprehensive one, and, being such, 
must count as a large majority amongst its members 
t/jose who are poor in capacities of thinking, and 
are passively resigned to the instinct of immediate 
pleasure — to these the writer must chiefly humbio 
himself; he must study their sympathies, must assume 
them, must give them back. In our days, he must 
give them back even their own street slang ; so servile 
is the modern novelist's dependence on his canaille of 
an audience. In France, amongst the Sues, &c., it 
has been found necessary to give back even the closest 
portraits of obscene atrocities that shun the light, and 
burrow only in the charnel-houses of vast manufac- 
turing towns. Finally, the very principle of com- 
manding attention only by the interest of a tale, which 
means the interest of a momentary curiosity that is to 
vanish forever in a sense of satiation, and of a mo- 
mentary suspense, that, having once collapsed, can 
never be rekindled, is in itself a confession of reli- 
ance upon the meaner offices of the mind. The result 
from all which is — that to be popular in the most 
extensive walk of popularity, that is, as a novelist, a 
writer must generally be in a very considerable degree 
self-degraded by sycophancy to the lowest order of 
minds, and cannot (except for mercenary purposes) 
think himself advantageously placed. 

To have missed, therefore, this enormous expansion 
of the reading public, however unfortunate for Gold- 
smith's purse, was a great escape for his intellectua. 
purity. Every man has two-edged tendencies lurking 
8 



"I ] I OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

within himself, pointing in one direction to what will 
expand the elevating principles of his nature, pointing 
In another to what will tempt him to its degradation. 
4 mob is a dreadful audience for chafing and irri- 
tating the latent vulgarisms of the human heart. 
Exaggeration and caricature, before such a tribunal, 
become inevitable, and sometimes almost a duty. 
The genial but not very delicate humor of Goldsmith 
would in such circumstances have slipped, by the most 
natural of transitions, into buffoonery ; the unaffected 
pathos of Goldsmith would, by a monster audience, 
have been debauched into theatrical sentimentality. 
All the motions of Goldsmith's nature moved in the 
direction of the true, the natural, the sweet, the gentle. 
In the quiet times, politically speaking, through which 
his course of life tiavelled, he found a musical echo 
to the tenor of his own original sensibilities — in the 
architecture of European history, as it unfolded its 
proportions along the line of his own particular expe- 
rience, there was a symmetry with the propositions of 
his own unpretending mind. Our revolutionary age 
would have unsettled his brain. The colossal move- 
ments of nations, from within and from without; the 
sorrow of the times, which searches so deeply ; the 
grandeur of the times, which aspires so loftily ; these 
forces, acting for the last fifty years by secict syr.V- 
pathy upon our fountains of thinking and impassioned 
speculation, have raised them, from depths never 
visited by our fathers, into altitudes too dizzy for 
their contemplating. This generation and the last 
with their dreadful records, would have untuned Gold 
smith for writing in the key that suited him ; and 7/5 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 115 

they would have untuned for understanding his music, 
had we not learned to understand it in childhood, 
before the muttering hurricanes in the upper air had 
begun to reach our young ears, and forced them away 
to the thundering overhead, from the carolling of birds 
amongst earthly powers. 

Goldsmith, therefore, as regards the political aspects 
of his own times, was fortunately placed ; a thrush or 
a nightingale is hushed by the thunderings which are 
awakening to Jove's eagle. But an author stands in 
relation to other influences than political ; and some 
of these are described by Mr. Forster as peculiarly 
unfavorable to comfort and respectability at the era of 
Goldsmith's novitiate in literature. Will Mr. Forster 
excuse us for quarrelling with his whole doctrine upon 
this subject — a subject and a doctrine continually 
forced upon our attention, in these days, by the extend- 
ing lines of our own literary order, and continually 
refreshed in warmth of coloring by the contrast as 
regards social consideration, between our literary body 
and the corresponding order in France. The ques- 
tions arising have really a general interest, as well as 
a special one, in connection with Goldsmith ; and 
therefore we shall stir them a little, not with any view 
of exhausting the philosophy that is applicable to the 
case, but simply of amusing some readers (since 
Pliny's remark on history is much more true of litera- 
ture or literary gossip, namely, that " quoquo modo 
scripta delectat ") ; and with the more ambitious purpose 
of recalling some other readers from precipitate conclu- 
sions upon a subject where nearly all that is most 
plausible happens to be most untrue. 



116 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Mr. Forster, in his views upon the social rights of 
literature, is rowing pretty nearly in the same boat 
as Mr. Carlyle in his views upon the rights of labor. 
Each denounces, or by implication denounces, as an 
oppression and a nuisance, what we believe to be a 
Lecessity inalienable from the economy and structure 
of our society. Some years ago Mr. Carlyle offended 
us all (or all of us that were interested in social phi- 
losophy) by enlarging on a social affliction, which few 
indeed needed to see exposed, but most men would 
have rejoiced to see remedied, if it were but on paper, 
and by way of tentative suggestion. Precisely at that 
point, however, where his aid was invoked, Mr. Carlyle 
halted. So does Mr. Forster with legard to his griev- 
ance ; he states it, and we partly understand him — as 
ancient Pistol says — " We hear him with ears ; " and 
when we wait for him to go on, saying — " Well, here 's 
a sort of evil in life, how would you redress it ? you 've 
shown, or you 've made another hole in the tin-kettle 
of society; how do you propose to tinker it?" — 
behold ! he is suddenly almost silent. But this cannot 
be allowed. The right to insist upon a well-known 
grievance cannot be granted to that man (Mr. Carlyle, 
for instance, or Mr. Forster) who uses it as matter of 
blame and denunciation, unless, at the same time, he 
points out the methods by which it could have been 
prevented. He that simply bemoans an evil has a 
right to his moan, though he should make no preten- 
sions to a remedy; but he that criminates, that im- 
putes the evil' as a fault, that charges the evil upon 
selfishness or neglect lurking in some alterable arrange- 
ments of society, has no light to do so, unless he can 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 117 

instantly sketch the remedy ; for the very first step by 
which he could ha^'e learned that the evil involved a 
blame, the first step that could have entitled him to 
denounce it as a wrong, must have been that step 
which brought him within the knowledge (wanting to 
eveiybody else) that it admitted of a cure. A wrong 
it could not have been even in his eyes, so long as it 
was a necessity, nor a ground of complaint until the 
cure appeared to him a possibility. And the over- 
riding motto for these parallel speculations of Messrs. 
Carlyle and Forster, in relation to the frailties of our 
social system, ought to have been, " Sanabilibus 
(Bgrotamus nialis." Unless with this watchword they 
had no right to commence their crusading march. 
Curable evils justify clamorous complaints ; the incur- 
able justify only prayers. 

Why it was that Mr. Carlyle, in particular, halted bo 
steadily at the point where his work of love was first 
beginning, it is not difficult to guess. As the " Statutes 
at large " have not one word against the liberty of 
unlicensed hypothesis, it is conceivable that Mr. C. 
might have indulged a little in that agreeable pastime; 
but this, he was well aware, would have brought him 
in one moment under the fire of Political Economy, 
from the whole vast line of its modern batteries. 

These o-entlemen, the economists, would have torn to 

* ... 

ribbons, within fifteen mmutes, any positive specula- 
tion for amending the evil. It w^as better, therefore.. 
to keep within the trenches of the blank negative, 
pointing to everything as wrong — horribly wrong, but 
never hinting at the mysterious right ; which, to this 



118 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

day, we grieve to say, remains as mysterious as 
ever. ® 

Passing to Mr. Forster, who (being capable of a 
splendor so original) disappoints us most when he 
reminds us of Mr. Carlyle, by the most disagreeable 
of that gentleman's phraseological forms ; and, in this 
instance, by a speculation twin-sister to the economic 
one just noticed ; we beg to premise that m anything 
here said, it is far from our wish to express disaffection 
to the cause of our literary brothers. We grudge 
them nothing that they are ever likely to get. We 
wish even that the House of Commons would see 
cause for creating majorats in behalf of us all ; only 
whispering in the ear of that honorable House to 
appoint a Benjamin's portion to ourselves, as the parties 
who suggested the idea. But what is the use of benev- 
olently bequeathing larks for dinner to all literary 
men, in all time coming, if the sky must fall before 
they can bag our bequest ? We shall discuss Mr. 
Forster's views, not perhaps according to any arrange- 
ment of his, but according to the order in which they 
come back to our own remembrance. 

Goldsmith's period, Mr. F. thinks, was bad — not 
merelj'' by the transitional misfortune (before noticed) 
of coming too late for the patron, and too soon for the 
public (which is the compound ill-luck of being a day 
after one fair, and a month too soon for the next), — 
but also by some cooperation in this evil destiny 
through misconduct on the part of authors themselves 
(p. 70). Not "the circumstances" only of authors 
were damagrd, but the " literary character " it?elf. 
We are sorry to hear that. But, as long as they did 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 119 

not commit murder, we have a great indulgence for 
the frailties of authors. If ever the " benefit of clergy " 
could be fairly pleaded, it might have been by Grub 
Street for petty larceny. The "clergy" they surely 
could have pleaded ; and the call for larceny was so 
audible in their condition, that in them it might be 
called an instinct of self-preservation, which surely 
was not implanted in man to be disobeyed. One word 
allow us to say on these three topics : — 1. The con- 
dition of the literary body in its hard-working section 
at the time when Goldsmith belonged to it. 2. Upon 
the condition of that body in England as compared 
with that of the corresponding body in France. 3. 
Upon the condition of the body in relation to patronage 
purely political. 

1. The pauperized (or Grub Street) section of the 
literary body, at the date of Goldsmith's taking service 
amongst it, was (in Mr. Forster's estimate) at its very 
lowest point of depression. And one comic presump- 
tion in favor of that notion we ourselves remember ; 
namely, that Smart, the prose translator of Horace, and 
a well-built scholar, actually let himself out to a month- 
ly journal on a regular lease of ninety-nine years. '^ What 
could move the rapacious publisher to draw the leass 
for this monstrous term of years, we cannot conjec- 
ture. Surely the villain might have been content with 
threescore years and ten. But think, reader, of poor 
Smart two years after, upon another publisher's apply- 
ing to him vainly for contributions, and angrily de- 
manding v'hat possible objection could be made to 
offers so liberal, being reduced to answer — " No objec- 
tion, sir, whatever, except an unexpired te-m of ninety* 



120 OLIVER GOLDhilvinrf. 

seven years yet to run." The bookseller saw that he 
must not apply again in that century ; and, in fact, 
Smart could no longer let himself, but must be sub-let 
(if let at all) by the original lessee. Query now — 
was Smart entitled to vote as a freeholder, and Smart's 
children (if any were born during the currency of 
the lease), w^ould they be serfs, and ascripti prelo? 
Goldsmith's own terms of self-conveyance to Griffiths 
■ — the terms we mean on which he "conveyed " his per- 
son and free-agency to the uses of the said Griffiths 
(or his assigns ?) — do not appear to have been much 
more dignified than Smart's in the quality of the con- 
ditions, though considerably so in the duration of the 
term; Goldsmith's lease being only for one year, and 
not for ninety-nine, so that he had (as the reader per- 
ceives) a clear ninety-eight years at his own disposal. 
We suspect that poor Oliver, in his guileless heart, 
never congratulated himself on having made a more 
felicitous bargain. Indeed, it was not so bad, if every- 
thing be considered; Goldsmith's situation at the time 
was bad ; and for that very reason the lease (otherwise 
monstrous) was not bad. He was to have lodging, 
board, and " a small salary," very small, we suspect ; 
and in return for all these blessings, he had nothing to 
do, but to sit still at a table, to work hard from an 
early hour in the morning until 2 P. M. (at which ele- 
gant hour we presume that the parenthesis of dinner 
occurred), but also — which, not being an article in the 
lease, might have been set aside, on a motion before the 
King's Bench — to endure without mutiny the correc- 
tion and revisal of all his MSS. by Mrs. Griffiths, 
wife to Dr. G. the lessee. This affliction of Mrs. Br. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 121 

G. surmounting his shoulders, and controlling his pen, 
seems to us not at all less dreadful than that of Sinbad 
when indorsed with the old man of the sea ; and we, 
in Goldsmith's place, should certainly have tried how 
far Sinbad's method of abating the nuisance had lost 
its efficacy by time, namely, the tempting our oppressor 
to get drunk once or twice a day, and then suddenly- 
throwing Mrs. Dr. G. off her perch. From that " bad 
eminence," which she had audaciously usurped, what 
harm could there be in thus dismounting this " old 
woman of the sea " ? And as to an occasional thump 
or so on the head, which Mrs. Dr. G. might have 
caught in tumbling, that was her look-out ; and might 
besides have improved her style. For really now, if 
the candid reader will believe us, we know a case, odd 
certainly but very true, where a young man, an author 
by trade, 8 who wrote pretty well, happening to tumble 
out of a first-floor in London, was afterwards observed 
to grow very perplexed and almost unintelligible in his 
style ; until some years later, having the good fortune 
(like Wallenstein at Vienna) to tumble out of a two-pair 
of stairs window, he slightly fractured his skull, but, on 
the other hand, recovered the brilliancy of his long 
fractured style. Some people there are of our ac- 
quaintance who would need to tumble out of the attic 
story before they could seriously improve their style. 

Certainly these conditions — the hard work, the being 
chained by the leg to the writing-table, and above all 
the having one's pen chained to that of Mrs. Dr. Grif- 
fiths, do seem to countenance Mr. F.'s idea, that Gold- 
smith's period was the purgatory of authors. And we 
freely confess — that excepting Smart's lainety-nine 



122 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

years' lease, or the contract between the Devil and Dr. 
Faustus, we never heard of a harder bargain driven 
with any literary man. Smart, Faustus, and Goldsmith, 
were clearly overreached. Yet, after all, was this treat- 
ment in any important point (excepting as regards Dr. 
Faustus) worse than that given to the whole college of 
Grub Street in - the days of Pope ? The first edition 
of the Dunciad dates from 1727 : Goldsmith's matric- 
Uxation in Grub Street dates from 1757 — just thirty 
years later; which is one generation. And it is im- 
portant to remember that Goldsmith, at this time in his 
twenty-ninth year, was simply an usher at an obscure 
boarding-school ; had never practised writing for the 
press ; and had not even himself any faith at all in 
his own capacity for writing. It is a singular fact, 
which we have on Goldsmith's own authority, that until 
his thirtieth year (that is, the year he spent with Dr. 
and Mrs. Griffiths) it never entered into his head that 
literature was his natural vocation. That vanity, which 
has been so uncandidly and sometimes so falsely attrib- 
uted to Goldsmith, was compatible, we see, if at all it 
existed, with the humblest estimate of himself. Still, 
however much this deepens our regard for a man of so 
much genius united with so much simplicity and unas- 
sumingness, humility would not be likely to raise his 
salary ; and we must not forget that his own want of 
self-esteem would reasonably operate on the terms 
offered by Griffiths. A man, who regarded himself as 
little more than an amanuensis, could not expect much 
Detter wages than an under-gardener, which perhaps 
ne had. And, weighing all this, we see little to have 
altered in the lease — that was fair enough ; only as 



OLIVER GOLDSJIITH, 123 

regarded the execution of the lease, we really must 
have protested, under any circumstances, against Mrs. 
Doctor Griffiths. That woman would have broken the 
back of a camel, which must be supposed tougher than 
the heart of an usher. There we should have made a 
ferocious stand ; and should have struck for much 
higher wages, before we could have brought our mind 
to think of capitulation. It is remarkable, however, 
that this year of humble servitude was not only (or, as 
if by accident) the epoch of Goldsmith's intellectual 
development, but also the occasion of it. Nay, if all 
were known, perhaps it may have been to Mrs. Doctor 
Griffiths in particular that we owe that revolution in 
his self-estimation which made Goldsmith an author 
by deliberate choice. Hag-ridden every day, he must 
have plunged and kicked violently to break loose 'from 
this harness ; but, not impossibly, the very effort of 
contending with the hag when brought into collision 
with his natural desire to soothe the hag, and the inev- 
itable counter-impulse in any continued practice of 
composition, towards the satisfaction at the same time 
of his own reason and taste, must have furnished a 
most salutary palcBStra for the education of his literary 
powers. When one lives at Rome, one must do as 
they do at Rome : when one lives with a hag, one 
must accommodate oneself to haggish caprices ; be- 
sides, that once in a month the hag might be right ; or 
if not, and supposing her always in the wrong, which 
perhaps is too much to assume even of Mrs. Dr. G., 
that would but multiply the difficulties of reconciling 
her demands with the demands of the general reader 
and of Goldsmith's own judgment. And in the pres- 



124 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

sure of these difficulties would lie the very value of this 
rough Spartan education. Rope-dancing cannot be 
very agreeable in its elementary lessons ; but it must 
be a capital process for calling out the agilities that 
slumber in a man's legs. 

Still, though these hardships turned out so beneft- 
cially to Goldsmith's intellectual interests, and, conse- 
quently, so much to the .advantage of all who have 
since delighted in his works, not the less on that ac- 
count they were hardships, and hardships that imposed 
heavy degradation. So far, therefore, they would seem 
to justify Mr. Forster's characterization of Goldsmith's 
period by comparison with Addison's period ^ on the 
one side, and our own on the other. But, on better 
examination, it will be found that this theory is sus- 
tained only by an unfair selection of the antithetic 
objects in the comparison. Compare Addison's age 
generally with Goldsmith's — authors, prosperous or 
unprosperous, in each age taken indiscriminately — 
and the two ages will be found to ofTer " much of a 
muchness." But, if you take the paupers of one gener-_ 
ation to contrast with the grandees of another, how is 
there any justice in the result? Goldsmith at starting 
was a penniless man. Except by random accidents 
he had not money enough to buy a rope, in case he 
had fancied himself in want of such a thing. Addison, 
on the contrary, was the son of a tolerably rich man ; 
lived gayly at a most aristocratic college (Magdalen), 
in a most aristocratic university ; formed early and 
brilliant connections with the political party that were 
magnificently preponderant until the last four years of 
Queen Anne ; travelled on the Continent, not as a 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 125 

po;]('?trian mendicant, housing with owls, and thankful 
fjr the bounties of a village fair, but with the appolnt- 
PK^nts and introduction of a young nobleman ; and 
became a secretary of state, not by means of his 
"delicate humor," as Mr. Forster chooses to svppose, 
but through splendid patronage, and (speaking Hiber- 
nice) through a " strong back." His bad verses, his 
Blenheim, his Cato, in later days, and other rubbish, 
had been the only part of his works that aided his rise ; 
and even these would have availed him little, had he 
not originally possessed a locus standi, from which he 
could serve his artilleries of personal flatteries with 
commanding effect, and could profit by his successes. 
As to the really exquisite part of his writings, that did 
him no yeoman's service at all, nor could have done; 
for he was a made man, and had almost received 
notice to quit this world of prosperous whiggery, 
before he had finished those exquisite prose miscella- 
nies. Pope, Swift, Cxay, Prior, &c., all owed their 
social positions to early accidents of good connections 
and sometimes of luck, which would not, indeed, have 
supplied the place of personal merit, but which gave 
lustre and effect to merit where it existed in strength. 
There were authors quite as poor as Goldsmith in the 
Addisonian age ; there were authors quite as rich as 
Pope, Steele, &c., in Goldsmith's age, and having the 
same social standing. Goldsmith struggled with so 
much distress, not because his period was more inau- 
spicious, but because his connections and starting 
advantages were incomparably less important. Hia 
profits were so trivial because his capital was next to 
none. 



126 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

So far, as regards the comparison between Gold- 
smith's age and the one immediately before it. But 
now, as regards the comparison with our own, removed 
by two generations — can it be said truly that the lit- 
erary profession has risen in estimation, or is rising ? 
There is a difficulty in making such an appraisement ; 
and from different minds there would proceed very 
different appraisements ; and even from the same mind, 
surveying the case at different stations. For, on the 
one hand, if a greater breadth of social respectability 
catches the eye on looking carelessly over the body of 
our modern literati, which may be owing chiefly to the 
large increase of gentlemen that in our day have en- 
tered the field of literature ; on the other hand, the 
hacks and hayidicraftsmen whom the shallow education 
of newspaper journalism has introduced to the press, 
and whom poverty compels to labors not meriting the 
name of literature, are correspondingly expandmg their 
files. There is, however, one reason from analogy, 
which may incline us to suppose that a higher consi^U 
eration is now generally conceded to the purposes of 
literature, and, consequently, a juster estimate made 
of the persons who minister to those purposes. Litera- 
ture — provided we use that word not for the mere 
literature of knowledge, but for the literature of 
power, using it for literature as it speaks to what 
is genial in man, namely, to the human spirit, ana 
7wt for literature (falsely so called) as it speaks to the 
meagre understanding — is a fine art ; and not only 
so, it is the supreme of the fine arts ; nobler, for in- 
stance, potentially, 4han painting, or sculpture, or archi- 
tecture. Now all the fine arts, thai popularly are 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 127 

called such, have risen in esteem within the last gen- 
eration. The most aristocratic of men will now ask 
into his own society an artist, whom fifty years ago he 
would have transferred to the house-steward's table 
And why? Not simply because more attention hav 
ing been directed to the arts, more notoriety has gath 
ered about the artist ; for that sort of eclat would not 
work any durable change ; but it is because the inter- 
est in the arts having gradually become much more 
of an enlightened interest, the public has been slowly 
trained to fix its attention upon the intellect which is 
presupposed in the arts, rather than upon the offices of 
pleasure to which they minister. The fine arts have 
now come to be regarded rather as powers that are to 
mould, than as luxuries that are to embellish. And it 
has followed that artists are valued more by the elabo- 
rate agencies which they guide, than by the fugitive 
sensations of wonder or sympathy which they evoke. 

Now this is a change honorable to both sides. The 
public has altered its estimate of certain men; and 
yet has not been able to do so, without previously en- 
larging its idea of the means through which those men 
operate. It could not elevate the men, without previ- 
ously elevating itself. But, if so, then, in correcting 
their appreciation of the fine arts, the public must si- 
rr.ultaneously have corrected their appreciation of lit- 
erature ; because, whether men have or have not been in 
Ihe habit of regarding literature as a fine art, this they 
must have felt, namely, that literature, in its more genial 
functions, works by the very same organs as the liberal 
arts, speaks to the same heart, operates through the 
same compound nature, and educates the same deep 



12S OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

sympathies with mysterious ideals of beauty. There 
lies the province of the arts usually acknowledged as 
fine or liberal ; there lies the province of fine or liberal 
literature. And with justifiable pride a litterateur may 
say — that his fine art wields a sceptre more potent 
than any other ; literature is more potent than other 
fine arts, because deeper in its impressions according- 
to the usual tenor of human sensibilities ; because 
more extensive, in the degree that books are more 
diffused than pictures or statues ; because more dura- 
hie, in the degree that language is durable beyond 
marble or canvas, and in the degree that vicarious 
powers are opened to books for renewing their phcenix 
immortality through unlimited translations ; powers 
denied to painting except through copies that are 
feeble, and denied to sculpture except to casts that are 
costly. 

We infer that, as the fine arts have been rising, 
literature (on the secret feeling that essentially it 
moves by the same powers) must also have been rising ; 
that, as the arts will continue to rise, literature will 
continue to rise ; and that, in both cases, the men, the 
ministers, must ascend in social consideration as the 
things, the ministrations, ascend. But there is another 
form, in which the same result offers itself to our 
notice ; and this should naturally be the last paragraph 
in this section 1, but, as we have little room to spare, 
it may do equally well as the first paragraph in section 
2, namely, on the condition of our own literary body by 
comparison with the same body in France. 

2. Who were the people amongst ourselves, that, 
throughout the eighteenth century, chiefly came for 



OLIVKR GOLDSMITH. 129 

^'ard as luulervaluers of literature ? They belonged 
to two very different classes — the aristocracy and the 
commercial body, who agreed in the thing, but on 
very different impulses. To the mercantile man, the 
author was an object of ridicule, from natural poverty ; 
natural, because there was no regular connection be- 
tween literature and any mode of money-making. By 
accident the author might not be poor, but profession- 
ally, or according to any obvious opening for an income, 
he was. Poverty was the badge of all his tribe. Amongst 
the aristocracy, the instinct of contempt, or at least of 
sliglu regard towards literature, was supported by the 
irrelation of literature to the state. Aristocracy itself 
was the flower and fruitage of the state; a nobility 
was possible only in the ratio of the grandeur and 
magnificence developed for social results; so that a 
poor and unpopulous nation cannot create a great aris- 
tocracy : the flower and foliation must be in relation 
to the stem and the radix out of which they germinate. 
Inevitably, therefore, a nobility so great as the English 
— that not in pride, but in the mere logic of its politi- 
cal relations, felt its order to be a sort of heraldic 
shield, charged with the trophies and ancestral glories 
of the nation — could not but in its public scale of 
appreciation estimate every profession and rank of 
men by the mode of their natural connection with 
the state. Law and arms, for instance, were honored, 
not because any capricious precedent had been estab- 
lished of a title to public honor in favor of those pro- 
lessions, but because, through their essential functions, 
they opened for themselves a permanent necessity of 
introsusception into the organism of the state. A grea 
9 6^ 



130 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

law officer, a great military leader, a popular admiral, 
is already, bv virtue of his functions, a noble in men's 
account, whether you gave or refused him a title ; and 
in such cases it has always been the policy of an aris 
tocratic state to confer, or even impose the title, lest 
the disjunction of the virtual nobility from the titular 
should gradually disturb the estimate of the latter 
But literature, by its very grandeur, is degraded social- 
ly; for its relations are essentially cosmopolitan, or. 
speaking more strictly, not cosmopolitan, which might 
mean to all other peoples considered as national states, 
whereas literature has no relation to any sections or 
social schisms amongst men — its relations are to the 
race. In proportion as any literary work rises in its 
pretensions ; for instance, if it works by the highest 
forms of passion, its nisus, its natural effort is to 
address the race, and not any individual nation. That 
it found a bar to this nisus, in a limited language, was 
but an accident: the essential relations of every great 
intellectual work are to those capacities in man by 
which he tends to brotherhood, and not to those by 
which he tends to alienation. Man is ever coming^ 
nearer to agreement, ever narrowing his differences, 
notwithstanding that the interspace may cost an eter- 
nity to traverse. Where the agreement is, not where 
the difference is, in the centre of a man's affinities, not 
of his repulsions, there lies the magnetic centre towards 
which all poetry that is potent, and all philosophy 
that is faithful, are eternally travelling by natural ten- 
dency. Consequently, if indirectly literature may nold 
a patriotic value as a gay plumage in the cap of a 
nation, directly, and, by a far deeper tendency, litera- 



OLIVER GOLDCM-m. 131 

ture is essentially alien. A poet, a book, a system of 
religion, belongs to the nation best qualified for appre- 
ciating their powers, and not to the nation that, per- 
haps by accident, gave them birth. How, then, is it 
wonderful that an intense organ of the social piin- 
ciple in a nation, namely, a nobility, should fail, in 
their professional character, to rate highly, or even to rec- 
ognize, as liaving any proper existence, a fine art which 
is by tendency anti-social (anti-social in this sense, 
that what it seeks, it seeks by transcending all social 
barriers and separations) ? Yet it is remarkable that 
in England, where the aristocracy for three centuries 
(16th, 17th, 18th) paid so little honor, in their public 
or corporate capacity, to literature, privately they hon- 
ored it with a rare courtesy. That same grandee, 
who would have looked upon Camden, Ben Jonson, 
Selden, or Hobbes, as an audacious intruder, if occu- 
pying any prominent station at a state festival, would 
have received him with a kind of filial reverence in 
his own mansion ; for, in this place, as having no 
national reference, as sacred to hospitality, which 
regards the human tie, and not the civic tie, he would 
be at liberty to regard the man of letters in his cos- 
mopolitan character. And on the same instinct, a 
prince in the very meanest state, would, in a state- 
pageant commemorating the national honors, assign 
a distinguished place to the national high admiral, 
though he were the most stupid of men, and would 
utterly neglect the stranger Columbus. But in his 
own palace, and at his own table, he would perhaps 
invert this order of precedency, and would place 
Coiumbus at his own ricfht hand. 



132 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Some such principle, as is here explained, did 
certainly prevail in the practice (whether consciously 
perceived or not in the philosophy) of that England, 
which extended through the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. First, in the eighteenth century all honol 
to literature, under any relation, began to give way. 
And why ? Because expanding politics, expanding 
partisanship, and expanding journalism, then first 
called into the field of literature an inferior class of 
laborers. Then first it was that, from the noblest of 
professions, literature became a trade. Literature it 
was that gave the first wound to literature ; the hack 
scribbler it was that first degraded the lofty literary 
artist. For a century and a half we have lived under 
the shade of this fatal revolution. But, however pain- 
ful such a state of things may be to the keen sensi- 
bilities of men pursuing the finest of vocations — 
carrying forward as inheritors from past generations 
the eternal chase after truth, and power, and beauty — 
still we must hold that the dishonor to literature has 
issued from internal sources proper to herself, and 
not from without. The nobility of England have, for 
three and a half centuries, personally practised litera- 
ture as an elevated accomplishment : our royal and 
noble authors are numerous ; and they would have 
continued the same cordial attentions to the literary 
body, had that body maintained the same honorable 
composition. But a litterateur, simply as such, it is 
no longer safe to distinguish with favor ; once, but not 
now, he was liable to no misjudgment. Once he was 
pretty sure to be a man of some genius, or, at the 
least, of unusual scholarship. Now, on the contrary 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



133 



a mob of traitors have mingled with the true men , 
uiid the loyal perish with the disloyal, because it is 
impossible, in a mob, so vast and fluctuating, for the 
artillery of avenging scorn to select its victitns. 

All this, bitter in itself, has become more bitter from 
the contrast furnished by France. We know that 
literature has long been misappreciated amongst our- 
selves. In France it has long been otherwise appre- 
ciated — more advantageously appreciated. And we 
infer that therefore it is in France more wisely appre 
riated. But this does not follow.. We have ever been 
of opinion that the valuation of literature in France, 
or at least of current literature, and as it shows itself 
in the treatment of literary men, is unsound, extrava- 
gant, and that it rests upon a basis originally false. 
Simply to have been the translator from the English 
of some prose book, a history or a memoir, neither 
requiring nor admitting any display of mastery over 
the resources of language, conferred, throughout tho 
eighteenth century, so advantageous a position in 
society upon one whom we English should view as a 
literary scrub or mechanic drudge, that we really had 
a riMit to expect the laws of France and the court 
ceremonies to reflect this feature of public manners. 
Naturally, for instance, any man honored so prepos- 
terously ought in law to have enjoyed, in right of his 
book, the jus trimn liberorum, and perpetual immunity 
from taxes. Or again, as regards ceremonial honors, 
on any fair scale of proportions, it was reasonable to 
expect that to any man who had gone into a fourth 
edition, the roj^al sentinels should present arms ; that 
to the author of a successf'il tragedy, the guard should 



134 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

everywhere turn out; and that an epic poet, if ever 
such a difficult birth should make its epiphany in PariS; 
must look to have his approach towards a soiree an- 
nounced by a salvo of a hundred and one guns. 

Our space will not allow us to go into the illustraiive 
details of this monstrous anomaly in French society. 
We confine ourselves to its cause — as sufficienlly 
explaining why it is that no imitation of such absurdi- 
ties can or ought to prosper in England. The same 
state of things, under a different modification, takes 
place in Germany ; and from the very same cause. 
Is it not monstrous, or was it not until within recent 
days, to find every German city drawing the pedantic 
materials and the pedantic interest of its staple con- 
versation from the systems and the conflicts of a few 
rival academic professors ? Generally these para- 
mount lords of German conversation, that swayed its 
movements this way or that, as a lively breeze sways 
a cornfield, were metaphysicians ; Fichte, for in- 
stance, and Hegel. These were the arid sands that 
bibulously absorbed all the perennial gushings of Ger- 
man enthusiasm. France of the last century and the 
modern Germany were, as to this point, on the same 
level of foolishness. But France had greatly the ad- 
vantage in point of liberality. For general literature 
furnishes topics a thousand times more graceful and 
fitted to blend with social pleasure, than the sapless 
problems of ontological systems meant only for scholas- 
tic use. 

But what then was the cause of this social deform- 
ity ? Why was literature allowed eventually to 
disfigure itself by disturbing the natural currents of 



OLIVER GOLDSTiUTH. 135 

conversation, to make itself odious by usurpation, and 
thus virtually to operate as a mode of pedantry ? It 
was because in neither land had the people any power 
of free discussion. It was because every question 
growing out of religion, or connecting itself with 
laws, or with government, or with governors, with 
political interests or political machineries, or with 
judical courts, was an interdicted theme. The mind 
sought in despair for some free area wide enough to 
allow of boundless openings for individualities of sen- 
timent — human enough to sustain the interests of 
festive discussion. That open area was found in 
books. In Paris to talk of politics was to talk of the 
king ; Vetat c'est mot ; to talk of the king in any 
spirit of discussion, to talk of that Jupiter optivius 
maximus, from whom all fountains flowed of good and 
evil things, before whom stood the two golden urns, 
one filled with lettres de cachet, the other with 
crosses, pensions, offices, what was it but to dance 
on the margin of a volcano, or to swim cotillons in 
the suction of a maelstrom ? Hence it was that 
literature became the only safe colloquial subject of 
a general nature in old France ; hence it was that 
literature furnished the only " open questions ; " ar I 
hence it is that the mode and the expression of honor 
to literature in France has continued to this hour 
tainted with false and histrionic feeling, because orig- 
inally it grew up from spurious roots, prospered un- 
naturally upon deep abuses in the system, and at this 
day (so far as it still lingers) memorializes the politi- 
cal bondage of the nation. Cleanse, therefore — is 
our prayer — cleanse, O, unknown Herrules! this 



136 OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 

Augean stable of our English current literature, rich m 
dunghills, rich therefore in precipitate mushroom and 
fraudulent fungus, yet rich also (if we may utter our 
real thoughts) — rich preeminently at this hour in 
seed-plots of immortal growths, and in secret vegeta- 
tions of volcanic strength ; — cleanse it (O coming 
rnan ! ) but not by turning through it any river of 
Lethe, such as for two centuries swept over the jitera 
ture of France. Purifying waters were these in one 
sense ; they banished the accumulated depositions of 
barbarism ; they banished Gothic tastes ; yes, but they 
did this by laying asleep the nobler activities of a 
great people, and reconciling them to forgetfulness of 
all which commanded them as duties, or whispered to 
them as rights. 

If, therefore, the false homage of France towards 
literature still survives, it is no object for imitation 
amongst us ; since it arose upon a vicious element 
in the social composition of that people. Partially it 
does survive, as we all know by the experience of the 
last twenty years, during which authors, and as authors 
^not like Mirabeau or Talleyrand in spite of author- 
ship), have been transferred from libraries to senates 
and privy councils. This has done no service to 
literature, but, on the contrary, has degraded it by 
seducing the children of literature from their proper 
ambition. It is the glory of literature to rise as if on 
wings into an atmosphere nobler than that of political 
intrigue. And the whole result to French literature 
has been, — that some ten or twelve of the leading 
literati have been tempted away by bribes from theii 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 137 

api)ro])nrite duties, while some five thousand have been 
made envious and discontented. 

At this point, when warned suddenly that the hour 
glass is running out, which measures our residuum o( 
flying minutes, we first perceive, on looking round, that 
we have actually been skirmishing with Mr. Forster, 
from the beginning of our paper to this very line ; 
and thus we have left ourselves but a corner for the 
main purpose (to which our other purpose of " ai'gle- 
bargling" was altogether subordinate) of expressmg 
emphatically our thanks to him for this successful 
labor of love in restoring a half-subverted statue to its 
upright position. We are satisfied that many thousands 
of readers will utter the same thanks to him, with equal 
fervor and with the same sincerity. Admiration for the 
versatile ability with which he has pursued his object is 
swallowed up for the moment in gratitude for his perfect 
success. It might have been imagined, that exquisite 
truth of household pathos, and of humor, with happy 
graces of style plastic as the air or the surface of a lake 
to the pure impulses of nature, sweeping them by the 
motions of her eternal breath, were qualities authorized 
to justif}' themselves before the hearts of men, in de- 
fiance of all that sickly scorn or the condescension of 
masquerading envy could avail for their disturbance. 
And so they are ; and left to plead for themselves at 
such a bar as unbiased human hearts, they could not 
have their natural influences intercepted. But, in the 
case of Goldsmith, literary traditions have 7iot left these 
qualities to their natural influences. It is a fact that up 
to this hour the contemporary falsehoods at Gold- 
smith's expense, and (worse perhaps than those false* 



13S OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

hoods the maUcious constructions of incidents partly 
true, having wings lent to them by the levity and 
amusing gossip of Boswell, continue to obstruct the full 
ratification of Goldsmith's pretensions. To this hour 
the scorn from many of his own age, runs side by side 
with the misgiving sense of his real native power. 
A feeling still survives, originally derived from his own 
age, that the " inspired idiot," wherever he succeeded, 
ought not to have succeeded, — having owed his success 
to accident, or even to some inexplicable perverseness in 
running counter to his own nature. It was by shooting 
awry that he had hit the mark; and, when most he 
came near to the bull's eye, most of all " by rights " he 
ought to have missed it. He had blundered into the 
Traveller, into Mr. Croaker, into Tony Lumkin ; and 
not satisfied with such dreadful blunders as these, he 
had consummated his guilt by blundering into the Vicar 
of Wakefield, and the Deserted Village ; atrocities over 
which, in effect, we are requested to drop the veil of 
human charity ; since, the more gem-like we may choose 
to think these works, the more unnatural, audacious, 
and indeed treasonable, it was in an idiot to produce 
them. 

In this condition of Goldsmith's traditionary character, 
so injuriously disturbing to the natural eflfect of hia 
inimitable works (for in its own class each of his best 
works is inimitable), Mr. Forster steps forward with a 
three-fold exposure of the falsehood inherent in the 
anecdotes upon which this traditional character has 
arisen. Some of these anecdotes he challenges as lit- 
erally false ; others as virtually so. They are true, per- 
haps, but under such a version of their circumstances as 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 1;J9 

would altogether take out the sting of their oflfensive in 
terpretation. For others again, and this is a profounder 
service, he furnishes a most just and philosophic expla- 
nation, that brings them at once within the reader's tol- 
eration, nay, sometimes within a deep reaction of pity. 
As a case, for instance, of downright falsehood, we may 
cite tlie well-known story told by Boswell, — that, when 
Goldsmith travelled in France with some beautiful youno- 
English women (meaning the Miss Hornecks), he was 
seriously uneasy*at the attentions which they received 
from the gallantry of Frenchmen, as intruding upon his 
own claims. Now this story, in logical phrase, proves 
too much. For the man who could have expressed such 
feelings in such a situation must have been ripe for 
Bedlam. Coleridge mentions a man who entertained so 
exalted an opinion of himself, and of his own right to 
apotheosis, that he never uttered that great pronoun " /," 
without solemnly taking off his hat. Even to the ob- 
lique case " 7ne" which no compositor ever honors with 
a capital M, and to the possessive pronoun vnjawA mine, 
he held it a duty to kiss his hand. Yet this bedlamite 
would not have been a competitor with a lady for the 
attentions paid to her in right of her sex. In Gold- 
smith's case, the whole allegation was dissipated in the 
most decisive way. Some years after Goldsmith's death, 
one of the sisters personally concerned in the case was 
unafTectedly shocked at the printed story, when commg 
to her knowledge, as a gross calumny ; her sorrow 
made it evident that the whole had been a malicious dis- 
tortion of some light-hearted gayety uttered by Gold- 
smith. There is little doubt that the story of the bloom 



140 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

colored coat, and of the puppet-show, rose on a similar 
basis — the calumnious perversion of a jest. 

But in other cases, where there really may have 
been some fretful expression of self-esteem, Mr. Furs- 
ter's explanation transfers the foible to a truer and 
a more pathetic station. Goldsmith's own precipi- 
tancy, his overmastering defect in proper reserve, in 
self-control, and in presence of mind, falling in with 
the habitual undervaluation of many amongst his 
associates, placed him at a great disadvantage in 
animated conversation. His very truthfulness, his 
simplicity, his frankness, his hurry of feeling, all told 
against him. They betrayed him into inconsiderate 
expressions that lent a color of plausibility to the 
malicious ridicule of those who. disliked him the more, 
from being compelled, after all, to respect him. His 
own understanding oftentimes sided with his disparag- 
ers. He saw that he had been in the wrong; whilst 
secretly he felt that his meaning — if properly ex- 
plained — had been right. Defrauded in this way, and 
by his own cooperation, of distinctions that naturally 
belonged to him, he was driven unconsciously to 
attempt some restoration of the balance, by claiming 
for a moment distinctions to which he had no real pre- 
tensions. The whole was a trick of sorrow, and of 
sorrowing perplexity. He felt that no justice had been 
done to him, and that he himself had made an opening 
for the wrong. The result he saw, but the process he 
could not disentangle ; and, in the confusion of his 
distress, natural irritation threw him upon blind efforts 
to recover his ground by unfounded claims, when 
claims so well-founded had been maliciously disallowed 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 141 

But a day of accounting comes at last, — a day of 
rehearing for the cause, and of revision for the judg- 
ment. The longer this review has been delayed, the 
more impressive it becomes in the changes which it 
works. Welcome is the spectacle when, after three- 
fourths of a century have passed away, a writer — 
qualified for such a task, by ample knowledge of 
things and persons, by great powers for a comprehen- 
sive estimate of the case, and for a splendid exposition 
of its results, with deep sensibility to the merits of the 
man chiefly concerned in the issue, enthusiastic, but 
without partisanship — comes forward to unsettle false 
verdicts, to recombine misarranged circumstances, and 
to explain anew misinterpreted facts. Such a man 
wields the authority of heraldic marshals. Like the 
Otho of the Roman theatre, he has power to raise or 
to degrade — to give or to take away precedency. 
But, like this Otho, he has so much power because he 
exercises it on known principles, and without caprice. 
To the man of true genius, like Goldsmith, when 
seating himself in humility on the lowest bench, he 
says, "Go thou up to a higher place. Seat thyself 
above those proud men, that once trampled thee in the 
dust. Be thy memorial upon earth, not (as of some 
who scorned thee) ' the whistling of a name.' Be 
thou remembered amongst men by tears of tenderness, 
by happy laughter untainted with malice, and by the 
benedictions of those that, reverencing man's nature 
see gladly its frailties brought within the gracious smile 
of human charity, and its nobilities levelled to the ap' 
prehension of simplicity and innocence." 

Over every grave, even though tenanted by guilt and 



142 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

shame, the human heart, when circumstantially made 
acquainted with its silent records of suffering- or temp- 
tation, yearns in love or in forgiveness to breathe a 
solemn Requiescat ! How much more, then, over the 
grave of a benefactor to the human race ! But it is a 
natural feeling, with respect to such a prayer, that, how- 
ever fervent and sincere, it has no perfect faith in its 
own validity, so long as any unsettled feud from ancient 
calumny hangs over the buried person. The undressed 
wrong seems to haunt the sepulchre in the shape of a 
perpetual disturbance to its rest. First of all, when this 
wrong has been adjudicated and expiated, is the Re- 
quiescat uttered with a perfect faith in itself. By a nat- 
ural confusion we then transfer our own feelings to the 
occupant of the grave. The tranquillization to our 
own wounded sense of justice seems like an atonement 
to his : the peace for us transforms itself under a fiction 
of tenderness into a peace for him : the reconciliation 
between the world that did the wrong and the grave that 
seemed to suffer it, is accomplished ; the reconciler, in 
such a case, whoever he may be, seems a double benefac- 
tor — to him that endured the injury — to us that re- 
sented it; and in the particular case now before the pub- 
lic, we shall all be ready to agree that this reconciling 
friend, who might have entitled his work Vindicice 
Oliveriance, has, by the piety of his service to a man of 
exquisite genius, so long and so foully misrepresented, 
earned a right to interweave forever his own cipher and 
cognizance in filial union with those of Oliver Gold- 
smith. 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 103. 

We do not allude cbiefly to his experience in childhood, when 
he is reported to have been a general butt of mockery for his 
ugliness and his supposed stupidity ; since, as regarded the latter 
reproach, he could not have suifered very long, having already, at 
a childish age, vindicated his intellectual place by the verses 
which opened to him an academic destination. We allude to his 
mature life, and the supercilious condescension with which even 
his reputed friends doled out their praises to him. 



Note 2. Page 104. 

We point this remark, not at Mr. Forster, who, upon the whole, 
shares our opinion as to the tolerable comfort of Goldsmith's life ; 
he speaks indeed elsewhere of Goldsmith's depressions ; but the 
question still remains — were they of frequent recurrence, and 
had they any constitutional settlement ? We are inclined to say 
nj in both cases. 



Note 3. Page 107. 

Which tub the reader may fancy to have been only an old tar 
barrel ; if so, he is wrong. Isaac Casauborn, after severe re 

(U3) 



141 OLIVER GOLDS.MITH. 

eearches into the nature of that tub, ascertained to the general 
satisfaction of Christendom that it was not of wood, or within 
the restorative powers of a cooper, but of earthenware, and , once 
shattered by a horse's kick, quite past repair. In fact, it was a 
large oil-jar, such as the remnant of tlie forty thieves lurked in, 
when waiting for their captain's signal from Ali Baba's house ; 
and, in Attica, it must have cost fifteen shillings, supposing that 
the philosopher did not steal it. Consequently a week's loss of 
house-room and credit to Oliver Goldsmith, at the rate of living 
then prevalent in Grub street, was pretty much the same thing in 
money value as the loss to Diogenes of his crockery house by burg- 
lary, or in any nocturnal lark of young Attic wine-bibbers. The 
underwriters would have done an insurance upon either man at 
pretty much the same premium. 

Note 4. Page 110. 

It may be necessary to explain, for the sake of the many persons 
who have come amongst the reading public since the period of the 
incident referred to, that this was a boy called Jones, who was 
continually entering Buckingham Palace clandestinely, was as 
regularly ejected by tlie police, but with respectable pertinacity 
constantly returned, and on one occasion effected a lodgment in 
the royal bedchamber. Some happy wit, in just admiration of such 
perseverance and impudence, christened him Iii-I-go Jones. 



Note 5. Page 112. 

Often, but not so uniformly (the reader will think) as the dic- 
tion, because the manners are sometimes not those of the writer's 
own age, being ingenious adaptations to meet the modern writer's 
conjectural ideas of ancient manners. These, however (even in 
Sir Walter Scott), are precisely the most mouldering parts in the 
entire architecture, being always (as, for instance, in Ivanhoe) 
fantastic, caricatured, and betraying the true modern ground 
gleaming tlirough the artificial tarnish of antiquity. All novels, 
in every language, are hurrying to decay ; and hurrying by in- 
ternal changes, were those all ; but, in the mean time, the ever- 



145 



lasting life and fertility of the human miud is forever accelerating 
this hurry by superseding them, that is, by an external change. 
Old forms, fading from the interest, or even from the apprehension, 
have no chance at all as against new forms embodying the same 
passions. It is only in the grander passions of poetry, allying 
themselves with forms more abstract and permanent, that such a 
conflict of the old with the new is possible. 

Note 6. Page 118. 

It onght, by this time, to be known equally amongst govern- 
ments and philosophers — that for the state to promise with sin- 
cerity the absorption of surplus labor, as fast as it accumulates, 
cannot be postulated as a duty, until it can first be demonstrated 
as a possibility. This was forgotten, however, by Mr. C, whose 
vehement complaints, that the arable field, without a ploughman, 
should be in one county, whilst in another county was the stout 
ploughman without a field ; and sometimes (which was worse 
still) that the surplus ploughmen should far outnumber the sui-- 
plus fields, certainly proceeded on the secret assumption that all 
this was within the remedial powers of the state. The same doc- 
trine was more openly avowed by various sections of our radicals, 
who (in their occasional insolent petitions to Parliament) many 
times asserted that one main use and function of a government 
was, to find work for everybody. At length (February and March, 
1848) we see this doctrine solemnly adopted by a French body of 
rulers, self-appointed, indeed, or perhaps appointed by their wives, 
and so far sure, in a few weeks, to be answerable for nothing ; but, 
on the other hand, adopting it as a practical undertaking, in the 
lawyer's sense, and by no means as a mere gayety of rhetoric. 
Meantime, they themselves will be "broken" befoi-e they will 
have had time for being reproached with broken promises ; though 
neither fracture is likely to i-equire much above the length of a 
quarantine. 

Note 7. Page 119. 

When writing this passage, we were not aware (as. we now are) 
that Mr. Forster had himself noticed the case. 



146 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

• Note 8. Page 121. 

His name began -with A, and ended with N ; there are but three 
more letters in the name, and if doubt arises upon our story, in 
the public mind, wc shall publish them. 

Note 9. Page 124. 

If Addison died (as we think he did) in 1717, then, because 
Goldsmith commenced authorship in 1757, thei'e would be forty 
years between the two periods. But, as it would be fairer to 
measure from the centre of Addison's literary career, that is, from 
1707, the diflerence would be just half a century. 



ALEXANDER POPE.* 

Every great classic in our native language should 
irom time to time be reviewed anew; and espe- 
cially if he belongs in any considerable extent to 
that section of the literature which connects itself 
with manners ; and if his reputation originally, or his 
style of composition, is likely to have been much influ- 
enced by the transient fashions of his own age. The 
withdrawal, for instance, from a dramatic poet, or a 
satirist, of any false lustre which he has owed to his 
momentary connection with what we may call the 
personalities of a fleeting generation, or of any undue 
shelter to his errors which may have gathered round 
them from political bias, or from intellectual infirm- 
ities amongst his partisans, will sometimes seriously 
modify, after a century or so, the fairest original 
appreciation of a fine writer. A window, composed 
of Claude Lorraine glasses, spreads over the land- 
scape outside a disturbing effect, which not the most 
practised eye can evade. The eidola theatri effect us 
all. No man escapes the contagion from his contem- 
porary bystanders. And the reader may see, further 

• The AVorks of Pope, by Roscoe. 



M3 ALEXANDER POFE. 

on, that, had Pope been merely a satiric poet, he must 
in these times have laid down much of the splendor 
which surrounds him in our traditional estimate of his 
merit. Such a renunciation would be a forfeit, n',t 
always to errors in himself, but sometimes to errors 
in that stago of English society, which forced the 
ablest writer into a collusion with its own meretricious 
tastes. The antithetical prose " characters," as they 
were technically termed, which circulated amongst the 
aristocracy in the early part of the last century, the 
style of the dialogue in such comedy as was then pop- 
ular, and much of the occasional poetry in that age, 
expose an immoderate craving for glittering effects 
from contrasts too harsh to be natural, too sudden to be 
durable, and too fantastic to be harmonious. To meet 
this vicious taste, from which (as from any diffusive 
taste) it is vain to look for perfect immunity in any 
writer lying immediately under its be'^ms, Pope sacri- 
ficed, in (me mode of composition, the simplicities of 
nature and sincerity ; and, had he practised no other 
mode, we repeat that now he must have descended 
from his pedestal. To some extent he is degraded 
even as it is ; for the reader cannot avoid whispering 
TO himself — what quality of thinking must that be 
M'hich allies itself so naturally (as will be shown) with 
distortions of fact or of philosophic truth ? But, had 
his whole writings been of that same cast, he must 
have been degraded altogether, and a star would have 
fallen from our English galaxy of poets. 

We mention this particular case as a reason gen- 
erally for renewing by intervals the examination of 
great writers, and liberating the verdict of their con« 



ALEXANDER TOPE. 149 

teiiipnrarifts from the casual disturbances to which 
every 'age is liable in its judgments, and in its tastes. 
Ai books multiply to an unmanageable excess, selec- 
tion becomes more and more a necessity for readers, 
and the power of selection more and more a desperate 
problem for the busy part of readers. The possibility 
of selecting wisely is becoming continually more hope- 
less, as the necessity for selection is becoming continu- 
ally more crying. Exactly as the growing weight of 
books overlays and stifles the power of comparison, part 
passu is the call for comparison the more clamorous ; 
and thus arises a duty correspondingly more urgent, of 
searching and revising until everything spurious has 
been weeded out from amongst the Flora of our highest 
literature ; and until the waste of time for those who 
have so little at their command, is reduced to a mini- 
mum. For, where the good cannot be read in its twen- 
tieth part, the more requisite it is that no part of the 
bad should steal an hour of the available time ; and it 
is not to be endured that people without a minute to 
spare, should be obliged first of all to read a book 
before they can ascertain whether it was at all worth 
reading. The public cannot read by proxy as regards 
the good which it is to appropriate, but it can as re- 
gards the poison which it is to escape. And thus, as 
literature expands, becoming continually more of a 
household necessity, the duty resting upon critics (who 
are the vicarious readers for the public) becomes con- 
tinually more urgent — of reviewing all works that 
may be supposed to have benefited too much or too 
indiscriminately by the superstition of a name. The 
prcBgitstatores should have tasted of every cup, and 



150 ALEXANDER POVE. 

reported its quality, before the public call .or it ; and 
above all, they should have done this in all cases of the 
higher literature — that is, of literature properly so 
called. 

What is it that we mean by literature ? Popularly, 
and amongst the thoughtless, it is held to include every- 
thing that is printed in a book. Little logic is required 
to disturb that definition ; the most thoughtless person 
is easily made aware that in the idea of literature one 
essential element is, — some relation to a general and 
common interest of man, so that what applies only 
to a local, or professional', or merely personal inter- 
est, even though presenting itself in the shape of a 
book, will not belong to literature. So far the defini- 
tion is easily narrowed ; and it is as easily expanded. 
For not only is much that takes a station in books not 
literature ; but, inversely, much that really is litera- 
ture never reaches a station in books. The weekly 
sermons of Christendom, that vast pulpit literature 
which acts so extensively upon the popular mind, — to 
warn, to uphold, to renew, to comfort, to alarm, — does 
not attain the sanctuary of libraries in the ten thou- 
sandth part of its extent. The drama again, as, for 
instance, the finest of Shakspeare's plays in England, 
and all leading Athenian plays in the noontide of the 
Atlic stage, operated as a literature on the public mind, 
and were (according to the strictest letter of that term) 
ptihlished through the audiences that witnessed i their 
representation some time before they were published 
as things to be read ; and they were published in this 
scenical mode of publication with much more effect 



ALEXANDER POPE. 151 

than they could liave had as books, during ages of 
costly copying or of costly printing. 

Books, therefore, do not suggest an idea coextensive 
and interchangeable with, the idea o£ literature ; since 
much literature, scenic, forensic, or didactic (as from 
lectur-ers and public orators), may never come into 
bocrcs ; and much that does come into books may 
connect itself with no literary interest. But a far more 
important correction, applicable to the common vague 
idea of literature, is to be sought — not so much in a 
better definition of literature, as in a sharper distinc- 
tion of the two functions which it fulfils. In that great 
social organ, which collectively we call literature, there 
may be distinguished two separate offices that may 
blend and often do so, but capable severally of a severe 
insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion. 
There is, first, the literature of Ji7iowledge, and, secondly, 
the literature of power. The function of the first is, 
to teax:h ; the function of the second is, to move : the 
first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The 
first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the 
second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher 
understanding or reason, but always through affections 
of pleasure and sympathy. Remotely, it may travel 
towards an object seated in what Lord Bacon calls dry 
'•ght; but proximately it does and must operate, else 
it ceases to be a literature of power, on and through 
.hat humid light which clothes itself in the mists and 
glittering iris of human passions, desires, and genial 
emotions. Men have so little reflected on the higher 
functions of literature, as to find it a paradox if one 
should describe it as a mean or subordinate purpose of 



152 ALEXANDER POPE. 

books to give information. But this is a paradox only 
in the sense which makes it honorable to be paradoxi- 
cal. Whenever we talk in ordinary language of 
seeking information or gaining knowledge, we under- 
stand the words as connected with something of abso- 
lute novelty. But it is the grandeur of all truth which 
can occupy a very high place in human interests, that 
it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds : 
It exists eternally by way of germ or latent prmciple 
in the lowest as in the highest, needing to be developed 
but never to be planted. To be capable of trans- 
plantation is the immediate criterion of a truth that 
ranges on a lower scale. Besides which, there is a 
rarer thing than truth, namely, 'power or deep sympa- 
thy with truth. What is the effect, for instance, upon 
society, of children ? By the pity, by the tender- 
ness, and by the peculiar modes of admiration, which 
connect themselves with the helplessness, with the 
innocence, and with the simplicity of children, not 
only are the primal affections strengthened and con- 
tinually renewed, but the qualities which are dearest 
in the sight of Heaven — the frailty, for instance, which 
appeals to forbearance, the innocence which symbol- 
izes the heavenly, and the simplicity which is most 
alien from the worldly, are kept up in perpetual re- 
membrance, and their ideals are continually refreshed. 
A purpose of the same nature is answered by the 
higher literature, namely, the literature of power. What 
do you learn from Paradise Lost ? Nothing at all. 
What do you learn from a cookery-book ? Something 
new, something that you did not know before, in every 
paragraph. But would you therefore put the wretched 



ALEXANDER POPE. 153 

cookery-book on a higher level of estimation than the 
divine poem ? Wliat you owe to Milton is not any 
knowledge, of which a million separate items are still 
but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly 
level ; what you owe, is power, that is, exercise and 
expansion to jour own latent capacity of sympathy 
with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate 
influx is a step upwards — a step ascending as upon a 
Jacob's ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes above 
the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from first to 
last, carry you further on the same plane, but could 
never raise you one foot above your ancient level of 
earth ; whereas, the very Jirst step in power is a flight 
— is an ascending into another element where earth 
is forgotten. 

Were it not that human sensibilities are ventilated 
and continually called out into exercise by the great 
phenomena of infancy, or of real life as it moves 
through chance and change, or of literature as it re- 
combines these elements in the mimicries of poetry, 
romance, &c., it is certain that, like any animal power 
or muscular energy falling into disuse, all such sensi- 
bilities would gradually droop and dwindle. It is in 
relation to these great moral capacities of man that the 
literature of power, as contradistinguished from that 
of knowledge, lives and has its field of action. It is 
concerned with what is highest in man ; for the Scrip- 
tures themselves never condescended to deal by sug- 
gestion or cooperation, with the mere discursive un- 
derstanding. When speaking of man in his intellect- 
ual capacity, the Scriptures speak not of the under- 
standing, but of "the UTiderstandiiig heart^'' — making 

7# 



154 ALEXANDER POfc. 

(he heart, that is, the great intuitive (or noivdiscursive^ 
organ, to be the interchangeable formula for man in 
his highesi, state of capacity for the infinite. Tragedy 
romance, fliiry tale, or epopee, all alike restore to 
man's mind the ideals of justice, of hope, of truth, of 
mercy, of retribution, which else (left to the support 
of daily life in its realities) would languish for want of 
sutficient illustration. What is meant, for instance, by 
poetic justice? — It does not mean a justice that diifers 
by its object from the ordinary justice of human juris- 
prudence ; for then it must be confessedly a very bad 
kind of justice ; but it means a justice that diifers frora 
common forensic justice, by the degree in which it 
attains its object, a justice that is more omnipotent 
over its own ends, as dealing — not with the refractory 
elements of earthly life — but with elements of its 
own creation, and with materials flexible to its own 
purest preconceptions. It is certain that, were it not 
for the literature of power, these ideals would often 
remain amongst us as mere arid national forms 
whereas, by the creative forces of man put forth in 
literature, they gain a vernal life of restoration, and 
germinate into vital activities. The commonest novel, 
by moving in alliance with human fears and hopes, 
with human instincts of wrong and right, sustains and 
quickens those affections. Calling them into action, 
it rescues them from torpor. And hence the pre- 
cininency over all authors that merely teach, of the 
tieanest that moves; or that teaches, if at all, indi- 
rectly by moving. The very highest work that haa 
ever existed in the literature of knowledge is but a 
provisional work : a book upon trial and sufferance, 



ALEXANDER POPE. 155 

and quanulm bene se gesserit. Let its teaching be 
even partially revised, let it be but expanded, nuy, 
even let its teaching be but placed in a better order, 
and instantly it is superseded. Whereas the feeblest 
works in the literature of power, surviving at all, sur- 
vive as finished and unalterable amongst men. For 
instance, the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton was a 
book militant on earth from the first. In all stages of 
its progress it would have to fight for its existence ; 
first, as regards absolute truth ; secondly, when that com- 
bat is over, as regards its form or mode of presenting 
the truth. And as soon as a La Place, or anybody else, 
builds higher upon the foundations laid by this book, 
effectually he throws it out of the sunshine into decay 
and darkness ; by weapons won from this book he 
superannuates and destroys this book, so that soon the 
name of Newton remains, as a mere nominis umhra, 
but his book, as a living power, has transmigrated into 
other forms. Now, on the contrary, the Iliad, the 
Prometheus of ^schylus, — the Othello or King Lear-, 
— the Hamlet or Macbeth, — and the Paradise Lost, 
are not militant but triumphant forever as long as the 
languages exist in which they speak or can be taught 
to speak. They never can transmigrate into new 
incarnations. To reproduce these in new forms, or 
variations, even if in some things they should he im- 
proved, would be to plagiarize. A good steam-engine 
is properly superseded by a better. But one lovely 
pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a 
statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo. 
These things are not separated by imparity, but by 
disparity. They arc not thought of as unequal under 



156 ALEXANDER POPE. 

the same standard, but as different in ki7id, and as 
equal under a different standard. Human works of 
immortal beauty and works of nature in one respect 
stand on the same footing : they never absolutely 
repeat each other ; never approach so near as not to 
differ ; and they differ not as better and worse, or 
simply by more and less ; they differ by undecipher- 
able and ncommunicable differences, that cannot le 
caught ' ly mimicries, nor be reflected in the mirror of 
copies, nor become ponderable in the scales of vulgar 
comparison. 

Applying these principles to Pope, as a representa- 
tive of fine literature in general, we would wish to 
remark the claim which he has, or which any equal 
writer has, to the attention and jealous winnowing of 
those critics in particular who watch over public 
morals. Clergymen, and all the organs of public 
criticism put in motion by clergymen, are more espe- 
cially concerned in the just appreciation of such 
writers, if the two canons are remembered, which we 
have endeavored to illustrate, namely, that all works 
in this class, as opposed to those in the literature of 
knowledge, first, work by far deeper agencies ; and, 
secondly, are more permanent ; in the strictest sense 
they are xtij/jutu h a,ev ; and what evil they do, or what 
good they do, is commensurate with the national lan- 
guage, sometimes long after the nation has departed. At 
this hour, five hundred years since their creation, the 
tales of^ Chaucer, 2 never equalled on this earth for their 
tonderness, and for life of picturesqueness, are read 
familiarly by many in the charming language of theii 
natal day, and by others in the modernizations of 



ALEXANDER POPE. 



151 



Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. At this hour, 
one thousand eight hundred years since their creation, 
the Paf-an tales of Ovid, never equalled on this earth 
for the gayety of their movement and the capricious 
graces of tlieir narrative, are read by all Christendom. 
This man's people and their monuments are dust ; but 
he is alive : he has survived them, as he told us thai 
he had it in his commission to do, by a thousand years ; 
" and shall a thousand more." 

All the literature of knowledge builds only ground 
nests, that are swept away by floods, or confounded 
by the plough ; but the literature of power builds nesta 
in aerial altitudes of temples sacred from violation, oi 
of forests inaccessible to fraud. This is a great pre- 
rogative of the power literature ; and it is a greater 
which lies in the mode of its influence. The knoiol- 
edge literature, like the fashion of this world, passeth 
away. An Encyclopaedia is its abstract ; and, in this 
respect, it may be taken for its speaking symbol, 
that, before one generation has passed, an Encyclo- 
pedia is superannuated; for it speaks through the 
dead memory and unimpassioned understanding, which 
have not the rest of higher faculties, but are continu- 
ally enlarging and varying their phylacteries. But all 
literature, properly so called — literature Jtwr' l?o/'/'', 
for the very same reason that it is so much more 
durable than the literature of knowledge — is (and by 
the very same proportion it is) more intense and elec- 
trically searching in its impressions. The directions 
in which the tragedy of this planet has trained our 
human feelings to play, and the combinations into 
ivhich the poetrv of this planet has thrown our human 



158 ALEXANDER POPE. 

passions of love and hatred, of admiration and cnn- 
tempt, exercise a power bad or good over human life 
that cannot be contemplated, when stretching through 
many generations, without a sentiment allied to awe. a 
And of this let every one be assured — that he owe." 
to the impassioned books which he has read, maiiy a 
thousand more of emotions than he can consciously 
trace back to them. Dim by their origination, these 
emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through life 
like the forgotten incidents of childhood. 

In making a revaluation of Pope, as regards some 
of his principal works, we should have been glad to 
examine more closely than we shall be able to do, 
some popular errors affecting his whole intellectual 
position ; and especially these two : first. That he be- 
longed to what is idly called the French School of our 
literature; secondly, That he was specially distin- 
guished from preceding poets by correctness. The 
first error has infected the whole criticism of Europe. 
The Schlegels, with all their false airs of subtlety, fall 
into this error in discussing every literature of Chris- 
tendom. But, if by a mere accident of life any poet 
had first turned his thoughts into a particular channel 
on the suggestion of some French book, that would 
not justify our classing what belongs to universal na- 
ture, and what inevitably arises at a certain stage of 
social progress, under the category of a French crea 
tion. Somebody must have been first in point of time 
upon every field; but this casual precedency estab- 
lishes no title whatever to authority, or plea of original 
dominion over fields that lie within the inevitable line 
of march upon which nations are moving. Had it 



ALEXANDER POPE. 159 

happened that the first European writer on the higher 
geometry was a Grseco-Sicilian, that would not liave 
made it rational to call geometry the Gi'ieco-Sicilian 
Science. In every nation first comes the higher form 
of passion, next the lower. This is the mere order of 
nature in governing the movements of human intellect, 
as connected with social evolution ; this is therefore 
tiie universal order, that in the earliest stages of litera- 
ture, men deal with the great elementary grandeurs of 
passion, of conscience, of the will in self-conflict ; 
they deal with the capital struggle of the human 
race in raising empires, or in overthrowing them — in 
vindicating their religion (as by crusades), or with the 
more mysterious struofgles amongst spiritual races 
allied to our own, that have been dimly revealed to 
us. We have an Iliad, a Jerusalem Delivered, a Para- 
dise Lost. These great subjects exhausted, or exhaust- 
ed in their more inviting manifestations, inevitably 
by the mere endless motion of society, there succeeds 
a lower key of passion. Expanding social intercourse 
in towns, multiplied and crowded more and more, 
Danishes those gloomier and grander phases of human 
history from literature. The understanding is quick- 
ened ; the lower faculties of the mind — fancy, and 
the habit of minute distinction — are applied to the con- 
templation of society and manners. Passion begins 
to wheel in lower flights, and to combine itself with 
interests that in part are addressed to the insulated 
understanding — observing, refining, reflecting. This 
may be called the minor key of literature in opposi- 
tion to the major, as cultivated by Shakspeare, Spen- 
ser, Milton. But this key arises spontaneously in every 



160 ALEXANDER POPE. 

people, and by a necessity as sure as any that moulds 
the progress of civilization. Milton and Spenser were 
not of any Italian school. Their Italian studies were 
the result and not the cause of the determination given 
to their minds by nature working in conjuction with 
their social period. It is equally childish to say of 
Dryden and Pope, that they belonged to any French 
s:hool. That thing which they did, they would have 
done though France had been at the back of China. 
The school to which they belonged, was a school de- 
veloped at a certain stage of progress in all nations 
alike by the human heart as modified by the human 
understanding. It is a school depending on the peculiar 
direction given to the sensibilities by the reflecting 
faculty, and by the new phases of society. Even as 
a fact (though a change as to the fact could not make 
any change at all in the philosophy of the case), it is 
not true that either Dryden or Pope was influenced by 
French literature. Both of them had a very imperfect 
acquaintance with the French language. Dryden ridi- 
culed French literature ; and Pope, except for some 
purposes connected with his Homeric translations, read 
as little of it as convenience would allow. But, had 
this been otherwise, the philosophy of the case stands 
good; that, after the prnnarj formations of the fer- 
menting intellect, come everywhere — in Thebes or 
Athens, France or England — the secondary; that, after 
the, creating passion comes the reflecting and recom- 
oming passion ; that after the solemnities and cloistral 
grandeurs of life — solitary and self-conflicting — comes 
the recoil of a self-observing and self-dissecting stage, 
derived from life social and gregarious. After the 



ALEXANDER POPE. 161 

fliad, but doubtless many generations after, comes a 
Batracliomyomachia. After the gorgeous masque of 
jur forefathers came always the anti-masque, that 
threw off echoes as from some devil's laughter in 
mockery of the hollow and transitory pomps that went 
before. 

It is an error equally gross, and an error in which 
Pope himself participated, that his plume of distinction 
from preceding poets consisted in correctness. Cor- 
rectness in what ? Think of the admirable qualifica- 
tions for settling the scale of such critical distinctions 
which that man must have had who turned out upon 
this vast world the single oracular word " correctness " 
to shift for itself, and explain its own meaning to all 
generations. Did he mean logical correctness in ma- 
turing and connecting thoughts ? But of all poets that 
have practised reasoning in verse, Pope is the one most 
inconsequential in the deduction of his thoughts, and 
the most severely distressed in any effort to effect or to 
explain the dependency of their parts. There are not 
ten consecutive lines in Pope unaffected by this infirm- 
ity. All his thinking proceeded by insulated and 
discontinuous jets ; and the only resource for Mm, or 
chance of even seeming correctness, lay in the liberty 
of stringing his aphoristic thoughts like pearls. Having 
no relation to each other but that of contiguity. To 
set them like diamonds was for Pope to risk distraction ; 
to systematize was ruin. On the other hand, if this 
elliptical word correctness is to be understood with 
such a complimentary qualification as would restrict it 
to Pope's use of language, that construction is even 
more untenable than the other — more conspicuously 
11 



IG2 ALEXANDER POPE. 

untenable — for many are they who have erred by illog- 
ical thinking, or by distracted evolution of thoughts ; 
but rare is the man amongst classical writers in any 
language who has disfigured his meaning more remark- 
ably than Pope by imperfect expression. We do not 
speak of plebeian phrases, of exotic phrases, of slang, 
from which Pope was not free, though more free than 
many of his contemporaries. From vulgarism indeed 
he was shielded, though imperfectly, by the aristocratic 
.so:;iety he kept : tliey being right, he was right ; and 
he erred only in the cases where they misled him ; for 
even the refinement of that age was oftentimes coarse 
and vulgar. His grammar, indeed, is often vicious : 
preterites and participles he constantly confounds, and 
registers this class of blunders forever by the cast-iron 
index of rhymes that never can mend. But worse 
than this mode of viciousness is his syntax, which is 
so bad as to darken his meaning at times, and at other 
times to defeat it. But these were errors cleaving to 
his times; and it would be unfair to exact from Pope 
a better quality of diction than belonged to his con- 
temporaries. Still it is indisputable that a better model 
of diction and of grammar prevailed a century before 
Pope. In Spenser, in Shakspeare, in the Bible of King 
James' reign, and in Milton, there are very few gram- 
matical errors.4 But Pope's defect in language was 
almost peculiar to himself. It lay in an inability, 
nursed doubtless by indolence, to carry out and perfect 
the expression of the thought he wishes to commu- 
nicate. The language does not realize the idea ; it 
simply suggests or hints it. Thus, to gi'"o, a single 
illustration : — 



ALEXANDER I'OPE, Ifi.T 

«• Know, Goil and Nature only are the same ; 
In man the jiulgment ahoots at flying game." 

The first line one would naturally construe into this : 
that God and Nature were in harmony, whilst all other 
objects were scattered into incoherency by difference 
and disunion. Not at all; it means nothing of the 
kind ; but that God and Nature only are exempted 
from the infirmities of change. They only continue 
uniform and self-consistent. This might mislead 
many readers ; but the second line must do so ; for 
who would not understand the syntax to be, that the 
judgment, as it exists in man, shoots at flying game ? 
But, in fact, the meaning is, that the judgment, in 
aiming its calculations at man, aims at an object that 
is still on the wing, and never for a moment stationary. 
\V'e give this as a specimen of a fault in diction, the 
very worst amongst all that are possible, To write bad 
grammar or colloquial slang does not necessarily ob- 
scure the sense; but a fault like this is a treachery, 
and hides the true meaning under the cloud of a co- 
nundrum; nay, worse; for even a conundrum has 
fixed conditions for determining its solution, but this 
sort of mutilated expression is left to the solutions of 
conjecture. 

There are endless varieties of this fault in Pope, by 
which he sought relief for himself from half-an-hour's 
labor, at the price of utter darkness to his reader. 

One editor distinguishes amongst the epistles that 
which Pope addressed to Lord Oxford some years 
after his fall, as about the most " correct, musical, 
dignified, and aflfecting," that the poet has left. Now, 
even as a specimen of vernacular English, it is con* 



164 ALEXANDER fOrE. 

spicuously bad : the shocking gallicism, for instance, 
of " attend" for " wait his leisure," in the line, " For 
Mm (that is, on his behalf) thou oft hast bid the world 
attend," would alone degrade the verses. To bid the 
world attend — is to bid the world to listen attentively ; 
whereas what Pope means is, that Lord Oxford bade 
the world wait in his ante-chamber, until he had leisure 
from his important conferences with a poet, to th:ow 
a glance upon affairs so trivial as those of the hmnan 
race. This use of the word attend is a shocking 
violation of the English idiom; and even the slightest 
would be an unpardonable blemish in a poem of 
only forty lines, which ought to be polished as ex- 
quisitely as a cameo. It is a still worse disfiguration of 
the very same class, namely, a silent confession of defeat, 
in a regular wrestling match with the difficulties of a 
metrical expression, that the poem terminates thus - 

" Nor fears to tell that Mortimer is be." 

Why should he fear? Really there is no /ery despe- 
rate courage required for telling the most horrible of 
secrets about Mortimer. Had Mortimer even been so 
wicked as to set the Thames on fire, safely it might 
have been published by Mortimer's bosom friend to all 
magistrates, sheriffs, and constables ; for not a man of 
ihem would have guessed in what hiding-place to look 
for Mortimer, or who Mortimer might be. True it is, 
that a secondary earldom, conferred by Queen Anne 
upon Robert Harley, was that of Mortimer; but it 
lurked unknown to the public ear ; it was a coronet 
that lay hid under the beams of Oxford — a title 
so long familiar to English ears, when descending 



ALEXANDER POPE. 165 

through six-and-twenty generations of de Veres. Quite 
as reasonable it would be in a birth-day ode to the 
Prince of Wales, if he were addressed as my Lord 
of Chester, or Baron of Renfrew, or your Grace 
of Cornwall. To express a thing in cipher may do 
for a conspirator ; but a poet's correctness is shown in 
his intelligibility. 

Amongst the early poems of Pope, the " Eloisa to 
Abelard " has a special interest of a double order 
First, it has a personal interest as the poem of Pope, 
because indicating the original destination of Pope's 
intellect, and the strength of his native vocation to a 
class of poetry in deeper keys of passion than any 
which he systematically cultivated. For itself also, 
and abstracting from its connection with Pope's natural 
destination, this poem has a second interest, an in- 
trinsic interest, that will always make it dear to impas- 
sioned minds. The self-conflict — the flux and reflux 
of the poor agitated heart — the spectacle of Eioisa 
now bending penitentially before the shadowy austeri- 
ties of a monastic future, now raving upon the remem- 
brances of the guilty past — one moment reconciled 
by the very anguish of her soul to the grandeurs of 
religion and of prostrate adoration, the next moment 
revolting to perilous retrospects of her treacherous 
happiness — the recognition, by shining gleams through 
the very storm and darkness evoked by her earthlv 
sensibilities, of a sensibility deeper far in its ground, 
and that trembled towards holier objects — the lyrical 
tumult of the changes, the hope, the tears, the rap- 
ture, the penitence, the despair — place the reader in 
tumultuous sympathy with the poor distracted nun. 



166 ALEXANDER POPE, 

Exquisitely imagined, among the passages towards the 
end, is the introduction of a voice speaking to Eloisa 
from the grave of some sister nun, that, in long- 
forgotten years, once had struggled and suffered like 
horself, 

" Once (like herself) that trembled, wept, and prayed. 
Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid." 

Exquisite is the passage in which she prefigures a visit 
yet to come from Abelard to herself — no more in the 
character of a lover, but as a priest, ministering by 
spiritual consolation to her dying hours, pointing her 
thoughts to heaven, presenting the Cross to her 
through the mists of death, and fighting for her as a 
spiritual ally against the torments of flesh. That an- 
ticipation was not gratified. Abelard died long before 
her ; and the hour never arrived for hiin of which with 
such tenderness she says, — 

" It will be then no crime to gaze on me." 

But another anticipation has been fulfilled in a degree 
that she could hardly have contemplated ; the anticipa- 
tion, namely, — 

" That ages hence, when all her woes were o'er. 
And that rebellious heart should beat no more," 

wandering feet should be attracted from afar 

" To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs," 

as the common resting-place and everlasting marriage- 
bed of Abelard and Eloisa ; that the eyes of many 
that had been touched by their story, by the memory 
of their extraordinary accomplishments in an age of 



ALEXANDER POPE. 167 

darkness, and by tlie calamitous issue of their attach 
meht, should seek, first and last, for the grave in 
which the lovers trusted to meet again in peace ; and 
should seek it with interest so absorbing, that even 
amidst the ascent of hosannas from the choir, amidst 
the grandeurs of high mass, the raising of the host, 
and " the pomp of dreadful sacrifice," sometimes these 
wandering eyes should steal aside to the solemn abid- 
ing-place of Abelard and his Eloisa, offering so pathetic 
a contrast, by its peaceful silence, to the agitations of 
their lives; and that there, amidst thoughts which by 
right were all due and dedicated 

" to Heaven, 
One human tear should drop and be forgiven." 

We may properly close this subject of Abelard 
and Eloisa, by citing, in English, the solemn Latin 
inscription placed in the last century, six hundred 
years after their departure from earth, over their com- 
mon remains. They were buried in the same grave, 
Abelard dying first by a few weeks more than twenty- 
one years ; his tomb was opened again to admit the 
coffin of Eloisa ; and the tradition at Quincey, the 
parish near Nogent-sur-Seine, in which the monastery 
of the Paraclete is situated, was, that at the moment 
of interment Abelard opened his arms to receive the 
impassioned creature that once had loved him so fran- 
tically, and whom he had loved with a remorse so 
memorable. The epitaph is singularly solemn in its 
brief simplicity, considering that it came from Paris, 
and from academic wits : " Here, under the same 
marble slab, lie the founder of this monastery, Peter 



168 ALEXANDER POPE. 

Abelard, and its earliest Abbess, Heloisa — once uniteo 
in studies, in love, in their unhappy nuptial engage- 
ments, and in penitential sorrow ; but now, our hope 
is, reunited forever in bliss." 

The Satires of Pope, and what under another name 
are satires, namely, his Moral Epistles, offer a second 
variety of evidence to his voluptuous indolence. They 
offend against philosophic truth more heavily than the 
Essay on Man ; but not in the same way. The Essay 
on Man sins chiefly by want of central principle, and 
by want therefore of all coherency amongst the sepa- 
rate thoughts. But taken as separate thoughts, viewed 
in the light of fragments and brilliant aphorisms, the 
majority of the passages have a mode of truth ; not of 
truth central and coherent, but of truth angular and 
splintered. The Satires, on the other hand, were of 
false origin. They arose in a sense of talent for caus- 
tic effects, unsupported by any satiric heart. Pope had 
neither the malice (except in the most fugitive form) 
which thirsts for leaving wounds, nor, on the other 
nand, the deep moral indignation which burns in men 
whom Providence has from time to time armed with 
scourges for cleansing the sanctuaries of truth and jus- 
tice. He was contented enough with society as he 
found it ; bad it might be, but it was good enough for 
kim ; — and it was the merest self-delusion if at any 
moment the instinct of glorying his satiric mis?;ion (the 
magnijicabo apostolatum meum) persunded him that in 
Ms case it might be said, Facit incagnaiio versinn. 
The indignation of Juvenal was not always very noble 
in its origin, or pure in its purpose ; it was sometimes 
mean in its quality, false in its direction, extravagant 



ALEXANDER POPE. 169 

\n itrf expression ; but it was tremendous in the roll of 
its thunders, and as withering as the scowl of a Mephis- 
lopheles. Pope, having no such internal principle of 
wrath boiling in his breast, being really (if one must 
speak the truth) in the most pacific and charitable 
frame of mind towards all scoundrels whatever, except 
such as might take it into their heads to injure a 
particular Twickenham grotto, was unavoidably a 
hypocrite of the first magnitude when he aflTected (or 
sometimes really conceited himself) to be in a dread- 
ful passion with offenders as a body. It provokes fits 
of laughter, in a man who knows Pope's real nature, 
to watch him in the process of brewing the storm that 
spontaneously will not come ; whistling, like a mariner, 
for a wind to fill his satiric sails ; and pumping up into 
his face hideous grimaces in order to appear convulsed 
with histrionic rage. Pope should have been coun- 
selled never to write satire, except on those evenings 
when he was suffering horribly from indigestion. By 
this means the indignation would have been ready- 
made. The rancor against all mankind would have 
been sincere ; and there would have needed to be no 
extra expense in getting up the steam. As it is, the 
short puffs of anger, the uneasy snorts of fury, in Pope's 
satires, give one painfully the feeling of a steam-engine 
with unsound lungs. Passion of any kind may become 
in some degree ludicrous, when disproportioned to its 
exciting occasions. But it is never entirely ludicrous, 
until it is self-betrayed as counterfeit. Sudden col- 
lapses of the manufactured wrath, sudden oblivion of 
the criminal, announce Pope's as always counterfeit. 
Meantime insincerity is contagious. One falsehood 



170 ALKXANDER POPE. 

draws on anotlier. And having begun by taking a 
station of moral censorship, which was in the utter- 
most degree a self-delusion, Pope . went on to other 
self-delusions in reading history the most familiar, or 
in reporting facts the most notorious. Warburton had 
more to do with Pope's satires as an original sug- 
ge5ter, ^ and not merely as a commentator, than with 
any other section of his works. Pope and he hunted 
in couples over this field ; and those who know the 
absolute craziness of Warburton's mind, the perfect 
frenzy and lymphalicus error which possessed him 
for leaving all high-roads of truth and simplicity, in 
order to trespass over hedge and ditch after coveys of 
shy paradoxes, cannot be surprised that Pope's good 
sense should often have quitted him under such guid- 
ance. There is, amongst the earliest poems of 

Wordsworth, one which has interested many readers 
by its mixed strain of humor and tenderness. It de- 
scribes two thieves who act in concert with each other. 
One is a very aged man, and the other is his great- 
grandson of three years old : 

" There are ninety good years of fair and foul weather 
Between them, and both go a stealing together." 

What reconciles the reader to this social iniquity, is 
the imperfect accountability of the parties ; the one 
being far advanced in dotage, and the other an infant. 
And thus 

" Into what sin soeTer the couple may fall, 
This child but half-knows it, and that not at all." 

Nobody besides suffers from their propensities : since 
the child's mother makes good in excess all their 



ALEXANDER POPE. 171 

weprcdations ; and nobod}' is duped for an instant by 
their {tioss attempts at fraud ; for 

" 'Wherever they carry their plots and their -wiles, 
Every fivce in the vilLige is dimpled with smiles." 

There was not the same disparity of years between 
Pope and Warburton as between old Daniel and his 
descendant in the third generation : Warburton wa- 
but ten years younger. And there was also this diffci- 
ence, that in the case of the two thieves neither was 
official ringleader; on the contrary, they took it turn 
about ; great-grandpapa was ringleader to-day, and the 
little great-grandson to-morrow : 

" Each in his turn was both leader and led ; '' 

whereas, in the connection of the two literary accom- 
plices, the Doctor was latterly always the instigator to 
any outrage on good sense ; and Pope, from mere 
habit of deference to the Doctor's theology and theo- 
logical wig, as well as from gratitude for the Doctor's 
pugnacity in his defence (since Warburton really was 
as good as a bull-dog in protecting Pope's advance or 
retreat), followed with docility the leading of his rever- 
end friend into any excess of folly. It is true that 
oftentimes in earlier days Pope had run into scrapes 
from his own heedlessness ; and the Doctor had not 
the merit of suggesting the escapade, but only of de- 
fending it : which he always does (as sailors express 
it) " with a will ; " for he never shows his teeth so 
much, or growls so ferociously, as when he suspects 
the case to be desperate. But in the satires, although 
the original absurdity comes forward in the text of 
Pope, and the Warburtonian note in defence is appai' 



37^ ALEXANDER POPE. 

ently no more than an afterthought of the good Doctor 
in his usual style of threatening to cudgel anybody 
A\ ho disputes his friend's assertion ; yet sometimes the 
thought expressed and adorned by the poet had been 
prompted by the divine. This only can account for 
the savage crotchets, paradoxes, and conceits, which 
disfigure Pope's later edition of his satires. 

Truth, even of the most appreciable order, truth of 
history, goes to wreck continually under the perversi- 
ties of Pope's satire applied to celebrated men ; and 
as to the higher truth of philosophy, it was still less 
likely to survive amongst the struggles for striking 
effects and startling contrasts But worse are Pope's 
satiric sketches of women, as carrying the same out- 
rages on good sense to a far greater excess ; and as 
these expose the folse principles on which he worked 
more brightly, and have really been the chief ground 
of tainting Pope's memory with the reputation of a 
woman-hater (which he was not), they are worthy of 
separate notice. 

It is painful to follow a man of genius through a 
succession of inanities descending into absolute non- 
sense, and of vulgarities sometimes terminating in 
brutalities. These are harsh words, but not harsh 
enough by half as applied to Pope's gallery of female 
portraits. What is the key to his failure ? It is simply 
that, throughout this whole satiric section, not one 
word L. spoken in sincerity of heart, or with any 
vestige of self-belief. The case was one of those 
so often witnessed, where either the indiscretion of 
friends, or some impulse of erring vanity in the writer 
had put him upon undertaking a task in which he had 



ALEXANDER POPE. 173 

too lidle natural interest to have either thouglit upon it 
with oriijinality, or observed upon it with fidelity. 
Sometimes the mere coercion of system drives a man 
into such a folly. He treats a subject which branches 
into A, B, and C. Having discussed A and B, upon 
wliich he really had something to offer, he thinks it 
necessary to integrate his work by going forward to 
C. on which he knows nothing at all, and, what is even 
worse, for which in his heart he cares nothing at all. 
Fatal is all falsehood. Nothing is so sure to betray 
a man into the abject degradation of self-exposure as 
pretending to a knowledge which he has not, or to an 
enthusiasm which is counterfeit. By whatever mistake 
Pope found himself pledged to write upon the char- 
acters of women, it was singularly unfortunate that he 
had begun by denying to women any characters at all. 

" Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear. 
And best distinguished by black, brown, or fiiir." 

Well for him if he had stuck to that liberal doctrine : 
"Least said, soonest mended." And much he could 
not easily have said upon a subject that he had pro- 
nounced all but a nonentity. In Van Troll's work, or 
n Horrebow's, upon Iceland, there is a well-known 
cnapter regularly booked in the index — Concerning 
the Snakes of Iceland. This is the title, the running 
rubric ; and the body of the cnapter consists of these 
words — " There are no snakes in Iceland." That 
chapter is soon studied, and furnishes very little open- 
ing foi foot-notes or supplements. Some people have 
thought that Mr. Van T. might with advantage have 
amputated this unsnaky chapter on snakes ; but at 



174 ALEXANDER POPE. 

least nobody can accuse him of forgetting his own 
extermination of snakes from Iceland, and proceed- 
ing immediately to describe such horrible snakes as 
eye had never beheld amongst the afflictions of the 
island. Snakes there are none, he had protested ; and, 
true to his word, the faithful man never wanders into 
any description of Icelandic snakes. Not so our satiric 
poet. He, with Mahometan liberality, had denied 
characters, that is, souls, to women. "Most women," 
he says, "have no character at all; "^ yet, for all that, 
finding himself pledged to treat this very subject of 
female characters, he introduces us to a museum of 
monsters in that department, such as few fancies could 
create, and no logic can rationally explain. What 
was he to do ? He had entered upon a theme con- 
cerning which, as the result has shown, he had not 
one solitary thought — good, bad, or indifferent. Total 
bankruptcy was impending. Yet he was aware of a 
deep interest connected with this section of his satires ; 
and, to meet this interest, he invented what was pun- 
gent, when he found nothing to record which was 
true. 

It is a consequence of this desperate resource — 
this plunge into absolute fiction — that the true objec- 
tion to Pope's satiric sketches of the other sex ought 
not to arise amongst women, as the people that suffered 
by his malice, but amongst readers generally, as the 
people that suffered by his fraud. He has promised 
one thing, and done another. He has promised a 
chapter in the zoology of nature, and he gives us a 
chapter in the fabulous zoology of the herald's college. 
A tigress is not much within ordinary experience, siill 



ALEXANDER POPE. 175 

there is such a creature ; and in default of a better 
choice, that is, of a choice settling on a more familiar 
object, we are content to accept a good description of 
a tigress. We are reconciled ; but we are 7iot recon- 
ci ed to a description, however spirited, of a basilisk. 
A viper might do ; but not, if you please, a dragoness 
or a harpy. The describer knows, as well as any of 
us the spectators know, that he is romancing ; the 
incredulus odl overmasters us all ; and we cannot 
submit to be detained by a picture which, according 
to the shifting humor of the poet, angry .or laughing, 
as a lie, where it is not a jest, is an affront to the truth 
of nature, where it is not confessedly an extravagance 
of drollery. In a playful fiction, we can submit with 
pleasure to the most enormous exaggerations ; but 
then they must be offered as such. These of Pope's 
are not so offered, but as serious portraits ; and in 
that character they affect us as odious and malignant 
libels. The malignity was not real, as indeed nothing 
was real, but a condiment for hiding insipidity. Let 
us examine two or three of them, equally with a view 
to the possibility of the object described, and to the 
delicacy of the description. 

" How soft is Silia ! fearful to ofifend ; 

The frail one's advocate, the weak one's friend. 
To her Calista proved her conduct nice ; 
And good Simplicius asks other advice," 

Here we have the general outline of Silia's charac- 
ter ; not particularly striking, but intelligible. She has 
a suavity of disposilion that accommodates itself to 
all infirmities. And the worst thing one apprehends in 
her is — falseness. People with such honeyed breath 



176 ALEXANDER POPE. 

for present frailties, are apt to exhale their rancor upon 
them when a little out of hearing. But really now 
this is no foible of Silia's. One likes her very well, 
and would be glad of her company to tea. For the 
dramatic reader knows who Calista is ; and if Silia 
has indulgence for her, she must be a thoroughly toler- 
ant creature. Where is her fault, then ? You shall 
hear — 

" Sudden she storms ! she raves ! — You tip the wink , 
But spare your censure ; Silia does not drink. 
All eyes may see from what the change arose : 
All eyes may see — (see what ?) — a pimple on her nose. '' 

JSilia, the dulcet, is suddenly transformed into Silia the 
fury. But why ? The guest replies to that question 
by winking at his fellow-guest; which most atrocious 
of vulgarities is expressed by the most odiously vul- 
gar of phrases — he tips the wink — meaning to tip 
an insinuation that Silia is intoxicated. Not so, says 
the poet — drinking is no fault of hers — everybody 
may see [why not the winker then ?] that what upsets 
her temper is a pimple on the nose. Let us under- 
stand you, Mr. Pope. A pimple ! — what, do you mean 
tu say that pimples jump up on ladies' faces at the 
unfurling of a fan ? If they really did so in the twelfth 
of George II., and a lady, not having a pimple on 
leavmg her dressing-room, might grow cne whilst 
taking tea, then we think that a saint might be excused 
for storming a little. But how is it that the wretch 
who winks, does not see the pimple, the causa teter' 
rima of the sudden wrath ; and Silia, who has no 
looking-glass at her girdle, does ? And then who is it 



ALEXANDER POPE. 177 

that Silia "stjnns" at — the company, or the piinple ? 
If at the company, we cannot defend her; but if at 
the pimple — 0, by all means — storm and welcome — 
she can't say anything worse than it deserves. Wrong 
or right, however, what moral does Silia illustrate 
more profound than this — that a particular lady, 
otherwise very amiable, falls into a passion upon 
suddenly finding her face disfigured ? But then one 
remembers the song, " My face is my fortune, sir, 
she said, sir, she said " — it is a part of every woman's 
fortune, so long as she is young. Now, to find one's 
fortune dilapidating by changes so rapid as this — 
pimples rising as suddenly as April clouds — is far too 
trying a calamity, that a little fretfulness should merit 
either reproach or sneer. Dr. Johnson's opinion was, 
that the man who cared little for dinner, could not be 
reasonably supposed to care much for anything. More 
truly it may be said, that the woman who is reckless 
about her face must be an unsafe person to trust with 
a secret. But, seriously, what moral, what philosophic 
thought can be exemplified by a case so insipid, and sc 
imperfectly explained as this ? But we must move on 
Next, then, let us come to the case of Narcissa : — 

" ' Odious ! in icoollen ? '^ 'T would a saint provoke,' 
Were tlie last words that poor Narcissa spoke. 
' No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace 
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face ; 
One would not sure be frightful when one 's dead : 
And, Betty, give this check a little red.' " 

Well, what's tlie matter now? What's amiss vvitb 

Narcissa, that a satirist must be calle.l in to hold an 

inquest upon her corpse, and take Betty's evidenca 

12 8* 



17S ALEXANDER POPE. 

against her mistress ? Upon hearing any such ques 
tion, Pope would have started up in the character 
^very unusual with him) of religious censor, and 
demanded whether one approved of a woman's fixing 
her last dying thought upon the attractions of a person 
so soon to dwell with darkness and worms ? Was 
that right — to provide for coquetting in her coffin? 
Why no, not strictly right, its impropriety cannot be 
denied ; but what strikes me even more is, the 
suspicion that it may be a lie. Be this as it may, 
there are two insurmountable objections to the case of 
Narcissa, even supposing it not fictitious — namely, first, 
that so for as it offends at all, it otiends the religious 
sense, and not any sense of which satire takes charge ; 
secondlj'', that without reference to the special func- 
tions of satire, any form of poetry whatever, or any 
mode of moral censure, concerns itself not at all with 
anomalies. If the anecdote of Narcissa were other 
than a fiction, then it was a case too peculiar and 
idiosyncratic to furnish a poetic illustration ; neither 
moral philosophy nor poetry condescends to the mon- 
strous or the abnormal ; both one and the other deal 
with the catholic aiiu the representative. 

There is another Narcissa amongst Pope's tulip- 
beds of ladies, who is even more open to criticism — 
because offering not so much an anomaly m one 
single trait of her character, as an utter anarchy in all. 
Flavia and Philomedc again present the same mul- 
titude of features with the same absence of all central 
principle for locking them into unity. They must 
have been distracting to themselves, and they are dis- 
tracting to us a century later. Philomede. by the way, 



ALEXANDER TOPE. 179 

stands for the second Duchess of Marlborough, ^ daugh- 
ter of the great Duke. And these names lead us 
natural y to Sarah, the original, and (one may call 
her) the historical Duchess, who is libelled under the 
name of Atossa. This character amongst all Pope's 
satiric sketches has been celebrated the most, with the 
single exception of his Atticus. But the Atticus 
rested upon a different basis — it was true ; and it was 
noble. Addison really had the infirmities of envious 
jealousy, of stimulated friendship, and of treacherous 
collusion with his friend's enemies — which Pope 
imputed to him under the happy parisyllabic name of 
Atticus ; and the mode of imputation, the tone of 
expostulation — indignant as regarded Pope's own 
injuries, but yet full of respect for Addison, and even 
of sorrowful tenderness ; all this in combination with 
the interest attached to a feud between two men so 
eminent, has sustained the Attiacs as a classic remenj- 
brance in satiric literature. But the Atossa is a mere 
chaos of incompatibilities, thrown together as into 
some witch's cauldron. The witch, however, had 
sometimes an unaffected malignity, a sincerity of 
venom in her wrath, which acted chemically as a 
solvent for combining the heterogeneous ingredients in 
her kettle ; whereas the want of truth and earnestness 
in Pope leaves the incongruities in his kettle of descrip- 
tion to their natural incoherent operation on the reader. 
We have a great love for the great Duchess of Marl-- 
boroug-h, though too young by a hundred years ^ or so 
to have been that true and faithful friend which, as 
contemporaries, we might have been. 

What we love Sarah for, is partly that she has been 



180 ALEXANDER POPE. 

ill used by all subsequent authors, one copying from 
another a fury against h^r which even in the first of 
these authors »vas not real. And a second thing which 
we love is her very violence, qualified as it was. Sul- 
phureous vapors of wrath rose up in columns from the 
crater of her tempestuous nature against him that 
deeply offended her, but she neglected petty wrongs. 
Wait, however, let the volcanic lava have time to cool, 
and all returned to absolute repose. It has been said 
that she did not write her own book. We are of a 
different opinion. The mutilations of the book were 
from other and inferior hands ; but the main texture 
of the narrative and of the comments were, and must 
have been, from herself, since there could have been 
no adequate motive for altering them, and nobody else 
could have had the same motive for uttering them. It 
is singular that, in the case of the Duchess, as well as 
that of the Lady M. W. Montagu, the same two men, 
without concert, were the original aggressors amongst 
the gois deplume, namely, Pope, and subsequently Horace 
Walpule. Pope suffered more from his own libellous 
■assault upon Atossa, through a calumny against him 
self rebounding from it, than Atossa could have done 
from the point-blank shot of fifty such batteries. The 
calumny circulated was, that he had been bribed by 
the Duchess with a thousand pounds to suppress the 
character — which of itself was bad enough ; but, as 
•the consummation of baseness, it was added, that after 
all, in spite of the bribe, he caused it to be published. 
This calumny we believe to have been utterly without 
foundation. It is repelled by Pope's character, inca- 
pable of any act so vile, and by his position, needing 



ALEXANDER I'OrE. 181 

no bribes. But what we wish to add, is that the 
caUiinny is equally repelled by Sarah's character, 
incapable of any propitiation so abject. Pope wanted 
no thoui^and pounds; but neither did Sarah want his 
clemeiicy. He would have rejected the £1000 cheque 
with scorn ; but she would have scorned to offer it. 
Pope cared little for Sarah ; but Sarah cared less for 
Pope. 

What is offensive, and truly so, to every generous 
reader, may be expressed in two items: first, not pre- 
tendiuLT to have been himself injured by the Duchess, 
Pope was in this instance meanly adopting some third 
person's malice, which sort of intrusion into other 
people's quarrels is a sycophantic act, even where 
it may not have rested upon a sycophantic motive ; 
secondly, that even as a second-hand malice it is not 
sincere. More shocking than the malice is the self- 
imposture of the malice. In the very act of putBng out 
his cheeks like ^olus, with ebullient fury, and con- 
ceiting himself to be in a passion perfectly diabolic. 
Pope is really unmoved, or angry only by favor of 
dyspepsy ; and at a word of kind flattery from Sarah, 
(whom he was quite the man to love)^ though not at 
the clink of her thousand guineas, he would have 
fallen at her feet, and kissed her beautiful hand with 
rapture. To enter a house of hatred as a junior part- 
ner, and to take the stock of malice at a valuation — 
(we copy from advertisements) — that is an ignooie 
act. But then how much worse in the midst of all 
this unprovoked wrath, real as regards the persecution 
which it meditates, but false as the flatteries of a slave 
in relation to its pretended grounds, for the spectator 



182 ALEXANDER POPE. 

to find its malice counterfeit, and the fury only a pla- 
giarism from some personated fury in an opera ! 

There is no truth in Pope's satiric sketches of 
women — not even colorable truth ; but, if there were, 
how frivolous, how hollow, to erect into solemn mon- 
umental protestations against the whole female sex 
what, if examined, turn out to be pure casual eccen- 
tricities, or else personal idiosyncrasies, or else foibles 
shockingly caricatured, but, above all, to be such 
foibles as could not have connected themselves with 
sincere feelings of indignation in any rational mind I 

The length and breadth (almost we might say, 
the depth) of the shallowness, which characterizes 
Pope's Philosophy, cannot be better reflected than from 
the four well-known lines — 

" For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, 
His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right • 
For forms of government let fools contest, 
Whate'er is best administered is best." 

In the first couplet, what Pope says is, that a life, 
which is irreproachable on a human scale of appre- 
ciation, neutralizes and practically cantels all poss.ible 
errors of creed, opinion, or theory. But this schisni 
between the moral life of man and his moral faith, 
which takes for granted that either may possibly be 
true, whilst the other is entirely false, can wear a 
moment's plausibility only by understanding life in so 
limited a sense as the sum of a man's external actions, 
appreciable by man. He whose life is in the right, 
cannot, says Pope, in any sense calling f(v blame, 
hive a wrong fiiith ; that is, if his iJfe we?-6 light, his 
weed might be disregarded. But the iswer is — that 



ALEXjVNDKa POPE. ISIi 

his life, according to aay adequate idea of life in a 
moral creijture, carviot be in the right unless in so far 
as it bends to the influences of a true faith. How 
feeble a conception must that man have of the infinity 
which lurks in a human spirit, who can persuade hrna- 
self that its total capacities of life are exhaustible by 
the few gross acts incident to social relations or open \o 
human valuation ! An act, which may be necessarily 
limited and without opening for variety, may involve 
a large variety of motives — motives again, meaning 
grounds of action that are distinctly recognized for 
such, may (numerically speaking) amount to nothing 
at all when compared with the absolutely infinite 
influxes of feeling or combination of feeling that vary 
the thoughts of man ; and the true internal acts of 
moral man are his thoughts, his yearnings, his 
aspirations, his sympathies, his repulsions of heart. 
This is the life of man as it is appreciable by heavenly 
eyes. The scale ot an alphabet, how narrow is 
that ! Four or six and twenty letters, and all is 
finished. Syllables range through a wider compass. 
Words are yet more than syllables. But what are 
words to thoughts ? Every word has a thought corre- 
sponding to it, so that not by so much a? one solitary 
counter can the words outrun the thoughts. But every 
thought has not a word corresponding to it ; so that 
the thoughts may outrun the words by many a thou- 
sand counters. In a developed nature they do so. 
But what are the thoughts when set against the modifi- 
cations of thoughts by feelings, hidden even from him 
that feels them, or against the inter-combinations of 
such modifications with others — complex with com 



184 ALEXANDER POPE. 

plex, decomplex with decomplex — these can be un- 
ravelled by no human eye ! This is the infinite music 
that God only can read upon the vast harp of the 
human heart. Some have fancied that musical com- 
binations might be exhausted. A new Mozart might 
be impossible. All that he could do might already 
have been done. Music laughs at that, as ihe sea 
laughs at palsy for its billows, as the morning laughs 
at xd age and wrinkles for itself. But a harp, though 
a world in itself, is but a narrow world by comparison 
with the world of a human heart. 

Now these thoughts, tinctured subtly with the per- 
fume and coloring of human affections, make up the 
sum of what merits y-ui' sSo/)]^ the name of life; and 
these in a vast proportion depend for their possibilities 
of truth upon the degree of approach which the thinker 
makes to the appropriation of a pure fiiith. A man is 
thinking all day long, and putting thoughts into words ; 
he is acting comparatively seldom. But are any man's 
thoughts brought into conformity with the openings to 
truth that a f;xith like the Christian's faith suggests ? 
Far from it. Probably there never was one thought, 
from the foundation of the earth, that has passed 
through the mind of man, which did not ofTer some 
blemish, some sorrowful shadow of pollution, when ;'t 
came up for review before a heavenly tribunal ; thr.t 
i?, supposing it a thought entangled at all with human 
mterest3 or human passions. But it is the key in 
which tne thoughts move, that determines the stage 
of moral advancement. So long as we are human, 
many among the numerous and evanescent elements 
that enter (half-observed or not observed at all) inte 



ALEXANDER POPE, 1S5 

Dur thoughts, cannot but be tainted. But the govern- 
ing, the predominant element it is which gives the 
character and tlie tendency to the thought; and this 
must become such, must become a governing element, 
through the quality of the ideals deposited in the heait 
by the quality of the religious faith. One pointed 
illustration of this suggests itself from another poem 
of Pope's, in which he reiterates his shallow doctrine, 
In his Universal Prayer he informs us that it can 
matter little whether we pray to Jehovah or to Jove, 
so long as in either case we pray to the First Cause. 
To contemplate God under that purely ontological 
relation to the world, would have little more operative 
value for what is most important m man, than if he 
prayed to gravitation. And it would have been more 
honest in Pope to say, as virtually he has said in the 
couplet under examination, that it can matter little 
whether man prays at all to any being. It deepens 
the scandal of this sentiment, coming from a poet 
professing Christianity, that a clergjanan (holding pre 
ferment in the English Church) namely. Dr. Joseph 
Warton, justifies Pope for this Pagan opinion, upon 
the ground that an ancient philosopher had uttered the 
same opinion long^ before. What sort of philosopher ? 
A Christian ? No ; but a Pagan. What then is the 
value of the justification ? To a Pagan it could be 
no blame that he should avow a reasonable Pagan 
doctrine. In Irish phrase, it Avas " true for him.''' 
Amongst gods that were all utterly alienated from 
any scheme of moral government, all equally remote 
from the executive powers for sustaining such a 
government, so long as there was a practical anarchy 



138 ALEXANDER POPb. 

and rivalship amongst themselves, there could be no 
sufficient reason for addressing vows to one rather 
tlian to another. The whole pantheon collectively 
could do nothing for moral influences ; a fortiori, no 
separate individual amongst them. Pope indirectly 
confesses this elsewhere by his own impassioned 
expression of Christian feelings, though implicitly 
denying it here by his mere understanding. For he 
reverberates elsewhere, by deep echoes, that power in 
Christianity, which even in a legendary tale he durst 
not on mere principles of good sense and taste have 
ascribed to Paganism. For instance, how could a 
God, having no rebellion to complain of in man, 
pretend to any occasion of large forgiveness of man 
or of framing means for reconciling this forgiveness 
with his own attribute of perfect holiness ? What 
room, therefore, for ideals of mercy, tenderness, long- 
suffering, under any Pagan religion, under any wor- 
ship of Jove! How again from gods, disfigured 
by fleshly voluptuousness in every mode, could any 
countenance be derived to an awful ideal of purity ? 
Accordingly we find, that even among the Romans 
(the most advanced, as regards moral principle, of 
all heathen nations) neither the deep fountain of 
benignity, nor that of purity, was unsealed in man's 
heart. So much of either was sanctioned as could 
fall within the purposes of the magistrate, but beyond 
that level neither fountain could have been permitted 
to throw up its column of water, nor could in fact have 
had any impulse to sustain it in ascending ; and not 
merely because it would have been repressed by 
ridicule as a deliration of the human mind, but ilso 



ALEXANDER TOPE. IST 

because it would have been frowned upon gravely by 
tbc very principle of the Roman polity, as wandering 
away from civic objects. Even for so much of these 
great restorative ventilations as Rome enjoyed, she 
was indebted not to her religion, but to elder forces 
that act in spite of her religion, namely, the original 
law written upon the human heart. Now, on the other 
hand, Christianity has left a separate system of ideah 
amongst men, which (as regards their development; 
are continually growing in authority. Waters, afler 
whatever course of wandering, rise to the level of 
their original springs. Christianity lying so far above 
all other fountains of religious influence, no wonder 
that its irrigations rise to altitudes otherwise unknown, 
and from which the distribution to every level of 
society becomes comparatively easy. Those men are 
reached oftentimes — choosing or not choosing — by 
the healing streams, who have not sought them nor 
even recognized them. Infidels of the most deter- 
mined class talk in Christian lands the morals of 
Christianity, and exact that morality with their hearts, 
constantly mistaking it for a morality coextensive with 
man ; and why ? Simply from having been moulded 
unawares by its universal pressure through infancy, 
childhood, manhood, in the nursery, in the school, in 
the market-place. Pope himself, not bj'^ system or by 
aflfectation an infidel, not in any coherent sense a 
doubter, but a careless and indolent assenter to such 
doctrines of Christianity as his own Church prominently 
put forward, or as social respectability seemed to 
enjoin, — Pope, therefore, so far a very lukewarm 
Christian, was yet unconsciously to himself searched 



ISS ALEXANDER POPE. 

profoundly by the Christian types of purity. This vie 
may read in his 

" Hark, the herald angels say, 
Sister spirit, come away ! " 

Or, again, as some persons read the great lessons of 
spiritual ethics more pathetically in those that have 
transgressed them, than in those that have been faithful 
to the end, — read them in the Magdalen that fades 
away in penitential tears rather than in the virgin 
martyr triumphant on the scafTold, — we may see in 
his own Eloisa, and in her fighting with the dread 
powers let loose upon her tempestucjns soul, how 
profoundly Pope also had drunk from the streams 
of Christian sentiment through which a new fountain 
of truth had ripened a new vegetation upon earth. 
What was it that Eloisa fought witli? What power 
afflicted her trembling nature, that any Pagan religions 
could have evoked ? The human love, " the nympho. 
lepsy of the fond despair," might have existed in a 
Vestal Virgin of ancient Rome ; but in the Vestal what 
counter-influence could have come into conflict with 
the passion of love through any operation whatever of 
religion? None of any ennobling character that could 
reach the Vestal's own heart. The way in which reli- 
gion connected itself with the case was through a tra- 
ditional superstition, not built upon any fine spiritual 
sense of female chastity as dear to Heaven, but upon 
a gross fear of alienating a tutelary goddess by offering 
an imperfect sacrifice. This sacrifice, the sacrifice 
of the natural household i** charities in a few injured 
women on the altar of the goddess, was selfish in all 



ALEXANDER POPE. 189 

its Stages — seltish in the dark deity that could be 
pleased by the sufferings of a human being simply as 
sufferings, and not at all under any fiction that they 
were voluntary ebullitions of religious devotion — 
selfish in the senate and people who demanded these 
sufferings as a ransom paid through sighs and tears for 
their ambition — selfish in the Vestal herself, as sus- 
tained altogether by fear of a punishment too terrific 
to face, sustained therefore by the meanest principle 
in her nature. But in Eloisa how grand is the col- 
lision between deep religious aspirations and the per- 
secuting phantoms of her undying human passion' 
The Vestal feared to be walled up alive — abandoned 
to the pangs of hunger — to the trepidations of dark- 
ness — to the echoes of her own lingering groans — 
to the torments perhaps of frenzy rekindling at inter- 
vals the decaying agonies of flesh. Was that what 
Eloisa feared ? Punishment she had none to appre- 
hend. The crime was past, and remembered only by 
the criminals. There was none to accuse but herself; 
there was none to judge but God. Wherefore should 
Eloisa fear ? Wherefore and with what should she 
fight? She fought by turns against herself and against 
God, against her human nature, and against her spirit- 
ual yearnings. How grand were the mysteries of her 
faith, how gracious and forgiving its condescensions ! 
How deep had been her human love, how imperishable 
its remembrance on earth! "What is it," the Roman 
Vestal would have said, " that this Christian lady is 
afraid of? What is the phantom that she seems to 
see ? " Vestal ! it is not fear, but grief. She sees an 
innneasurable heaven that seems to touch her eyes; so 



190 ALEXANDER POPt,. 

near is she to its love. Suddenly, an Abelard — the 
glory of his race — appears, that seems to touch hef 
lips. The heavens recede and diminish to a starry 
point twinkling in an unfathomable abyss ; they are all 
but lost for her. Fire, it is, in Eloisa, that searches 
fire ; the holy that fights with the earthly ; fire that 
cleanses with fire that consumes. Like cavalry the two 
fres wheel and counterwheel, advancing and retreat- 
ing, charging and countercharging through and through 
each other. Eloisa trembles, but she trembles as a 
guilty creature before a tribunal unveiled within the 
secrecy of her own nature. There was no such trem- 
bling in the heathen worlds, for there was no such 
secret tribunal. Eloisa fights with a shadowy enemy. 
There was no such fighting for Roman Vestals ; because 
all the temples of our earth (which is the crowned 
Vesta), no, nor all the glory of her altars, nor all the 
pomp of her cruelties, could cite from the depths of a 
human spirit any such fearful shadow as Christian 
faith evokes from an afflicted conscience. 

Pope, therefore, wheresoever his heart speaks loudly, 
shows how deep had been his early impressions from 
Christianity. That is shown in his intimacy with Cra- 
shaw, in his Eloisa, in his Messiah, in his adaptation 
to Christian purposes of the Dying Adrian, ice. It is 
remarkable, also, that Pope betrays, in all places where 
lie has occasion to argue about Christianity, how much 
grander and more faithful to that great theme were the 
subconscious perceptions of his heart than the explicit 
commentaries of his understanding. He, like so many 
others, was unable to read or interpret the testimonies 
of his own heart, which is a deep over which diviner 



ALEXANDER POPE. 191 

agencies brood than are legible to the intellect. The 
cipher written on his Heaven-visited heart was deeper 
than his understanding could interpret. 

If the question were asked, What ought to have 
been the best among Pope's poems ? most people 
would answer, the Essay on Man. If the question 
•ware asked. What is the worst? all people of judg- 
ment would say, the Essay on Man. Whilst yet in its 
rudiments, this poem claimed the first place by the 
promise of its subject; when finished, by the utter 
failure of its execution, it fell into the last. The case 
possesses a triple interest — first, as illustrating the 
character of Pope modified by his situation ; secondly, 
as illustrating the true nature of that " didactic " poetry 
to which this particular poem is usually referred ; 
thirdly, as illustrating the anomalous condition to which 
a poem so grand in its ambition has been reduced by 
the double disturbance of its proper movement ; one 
disturbance through the position of Pope, another 
through his total misconception of didactic poetry. 
First, as regards Pope's situation, it may seem odd — 
but it is not so — that a man's social position should 
overrule his intellect. The scriptural denunciation of 
riches, as a snare to any man that is striving to rise 
above worldly views, applies not at all less to the intel- 
lect, and to any man seeking to ascend by some 
aerial arch of flight above ordinary intellectual efforts. 
Kiches are fatal to those continuities of energy without 
which there is no success of that magnitude. Pope 
had £800 a year. That seems not so much. No, 
certainly not, with a wife and six children ; but by 
accident Pope had no wife and no children. He was 



192 ALEXANDER POPE. 

luxuriously at his ease : and this accident of his posi- 
tion in life fell in with a constitutional infirmity that 
predisposed him to indolence. Even his religious faith, 
by shutting him out from those public employments 
which else his great friends would have been too 
happy to obtain for him, aided his idleness, or some- 
times invested it with a false character of conscientious 
self-denial. He cherished his religion confessedly as 
a plea for idleness. The result of all this was, that in 
his habits of thinking and of study (if study we can 
call a style of reading so desultory as his), Pope be- 
came a pure dilettante; in his intellectual eclecticism 
he was a mere epicure, toying with the delicacies and 
varieties of literature ; revelling in the first bloom of 
moral speculations, but sated immediately ; fastidiously 
retreating from all that threatened labor, or that ex- 
acted continuous attention ; fathoming, throughout all 
his vagrancies amongst books, no foundation ; filling 
up no chasms ; and with all his fertility of thought 
expanding no germs of new life. 

This career of luxurious indolence was the result of 
early luck which made it possible, and of bodily con- 
stitution which made it tempting. And when we re- 
member his youthful introduction to the highest circles 
in the metropolis, where he never lost his footing, we 
'^annot wonder that, without any sufficient motive for 
resistance, he should have sunk passively under his 
constitutional propensities, and should have fluttered 
amongst the flower-beds of literature or philosophy far 
more in the character of a libertine butterfly for casua. 
enjoyment, than of a hard-working bee pursuing a pre 
nieditated purpose. 



ALEXANDER TOrE. 193 

Such a character, strengthened by such a situation, 
would at any rate have disqualified Pope for compos, 
mg- a work severely philosophic, or where philosophy 
did more than throw a colored light of pensiveness 
upon some sentimental subject. If it were necessary 
that the pliilosophy should enter substantially into the 
ver}" texture of the poem, furnishing its interest and 
jirescribing its movement, in that case Pope's com- 
Itming and theorizing faculty would have shrunk as 
Irom the labor of building a pyramid. And woe to him 
where it did not, as really happened in the case of the 
Essay on Man. For his faculty of execution was 
under an absolute necessity of shrinking in horror 
from the enormous details of such an enterprise to 
which so rashly he had pledged himself. He was 
sure to find himself, as find himself he did, landed in 
the most dreadful embarrassment upon reviewing his 
own work. A work, which, when finished, was not 
even begun ; whose arches wanted their key-stones ; 
whose parts had no coherency; and whose pillars, in 
the very moment of being thrown open to public view, 
were already crumbling into ruins. This utter pros- 
tration of Pope in a work so ambitious as an Essay on 
Man — a prostration predetermined from the first by 
the personal circumstances which we have noticed — 
was rendered still more irresistible in the second place 
by the general misconception in which Pope shared 
as to the very meaning of " didactic " poetry. Upon 
which point we pause to make an exposition of our own 
views. 

What is didactic poetry? What does "didactic" 
niean when applied as a distinguishing epithet to such 



194 ALEXANDER POPE. 

an idea as a poem ? The predicate destroys the sub- 
ject. It is a case of what logicians call contradictio in 
aajccto — the unsaying- by means of an attribute the 
very thing which is the subject of that attribute you 
have just affirmed. No poetry can have the function 
of teaching. It is impossible that a variety of spei.ieb 
should contradict the very purpose which contradistin- 
guishes its genus. The several species differ partially; 
but not by the whole idea which differentiates their 
class. Poetry, or any one of the fine arts (all of which 
alike speak through the genial nature of man and his 
excited sensibilities), can teach only as nature teaches, 
as forests teach, as the sea teaches, as infancy teaches, 
namely, by deep impulse, by hieroglyphic ^ sugges- 
tion. Their teaching is not direct or explicit, but lurk- 
ing, implicit, masked in deep incarnations. To teach 
formally and professedly, is to abandon the very dif- 
ferential character and principle of poetry. If poetry 
could condescend to teach anything, it would be truths 
moral or religious. But even these it can utter only 
through symbols and actions. The great moral, for 
instance, the last result of the Paradise Lost, is once 
formally announced ; but it teaches itself only by dif- 
fusing its lesson through the entire poem in the total 
succession of events and purposes ; and even this suc- 
cession teaches it only when the whole is gathered into 
unity by a reflex act of meditation ; just as the pulsa- 
tion of the physical heart can exist only when all the 
parts in an animal system are locked into one organi' 
zation. 

To address the iTisulated understanding is to lay 
aside the Prospero's robe of poetry. The objection, 



ALEXANDER T'OPE. 195 

thorefore, to didactic poetry, as vulgarly understood, 
woidd be fatal, even if there were none but this logical 
obji'ction derived from its definition. To be in self- 
contradiction is, for any idea whatever, sufficiently tc 
destroy itself. But it betrays a more obvious and prac- 
tical contradiction when a little searched. If the true 
purpose of a man's writing a didactic poem were to 
teach, by what suggestion of idiocy should he choose 
to begin by putting on fetters ? Wherefore should the 
simple man volunteer to handcuff and manacle him- 
s:elf, were it only by the incumbrances of metre, and 
perhaps of rhyme ? But these he will find the very 
least of his incumbrances. A far greater exists in the 
sheer necessity of omitting in any poem a vast variety 
of details, and even capital sections of the subject, 
unless they will bend to purposes of ornament. Now 
this collision between two purposes, the purpose of use 
in mere teaching, and the purpose of poetic delight, 
shows, by the uniformity of its solution, which is the 
true purpose, and which the merely ostensible purpose. 
Had the true purpose been instruction, the moment that 
this was found incompatible with a poetic treatment, as 
soon as it was seen that the sound education of the 
reader-pupil could not make way without loitering to 
gather poetic flowers, the stern cry of " duty " would 
oblige the poet to remember that he had dedicated 
himself to a didactic mission, and that he differed from 
other poets, as a monk from other men, by his vows cf 
self-surrender to harsh ascetic functions. But, on the 
contrary, in the very teeth of this rule, wherever such 
a collision docs really take place, and one or other of 
the yupposed objects must give way, it is always the 



196 ALEXANDER POPE. 

vulgar object of teaching (the pedagogue's object^ 
which goes to the rear, whilst the higher object ol 
poetic emotion moves on triumphantly. In reality not 
one didactic poet has ever yet attempted to use any 
parts or processes of the particular art which he made 
his theme, unless in so far as they seemed susceptible 
of poetic treatment, and only because they seemed so. 
Look at the poem of Cyder, by Philips, of the Fleece 
of Dyer, or (which is a still weightier example) at the 
Georgics of Virgil, — does any of these poets show 
the least anxiety for the correctness of your principles, 
or the delicacy of your manipulations in the worshipful 
arts they atfect to teach ? No ; but they pursue these 
arts through every stage that offers any attractions of 
beauty. And in the very teeth of all anxiety for teach- 
ing, if there existed traditionally any very absurd way 
of doing a thing which happened to be eminently pic- 
turesque, and if, opposed to this, there were some im- 
proved mode that had recommended itself to poetic 
hatred by being dirty and ugly, the poet (if a good 
one) would pretend never to have heard of this dis- 
agreeable improvement. Or if obliged, by some rival 
poet, not absolutely to ignore it, he would allow that 
sucti a thing could be done, but hint that it was hateful 
to the Muses or Graces, and very likely to breed a 
pestilence. 

This subordination of the properly didactic function 
to the poetic, which, leaving the old essential distinc- 
tion of poetry (namely, its sympathy with the genial 
motions of man's heart) to override all accidents of 
special, variation, and showing that the essence of 
poetry never can be set aside by its casual modifica- 



ALKXAiNUER POPE. lO") 

tions, will be compromised by some loose thinlvers. 
under the idea that in didactic poetry the element of 
instruction is in fact one element, though subordinate 
and secondary. Not at all. What we are denying 
is, that the element of instruction enters at all into 
didactic poetry. The subject of the Georgics, for 
instance, is Rural Economy as practised by Italian 
farmers ; but Virgil not only omits altogether innumer- 
able points of instruction insisted on as articles of reli- 
gious necessity by Varro, Cato, Columella, &c., but, 
even as to those instructions which he does communi- 
cate, he is careless whether they are made technically 
intelligible or not. He takes very little pains to keep 
you from capital mistakes in practising his instruc- 
tions ; but he takes good care that you shall not miss 
any strong impression for the eye or the heart to which 
the rural process, or rural scene, may naturally lead. 
He pretends to give you a lecture on farming, in order 
to have an excuse for carrying you all round the beau- 
tiful farm. He pretends to show you a good plan for 
a farm-house, as the readiest means of veiling his im- 
pertinence in showing you the farmer's wife and her 
rosy children. It is an excellent plea for getting a 
peep at the bonny milk-maids to propose an inspection 
of a model dairy. You pass through the poultry-yard, 
under whatever pretence, in reality to see the peacock 
and his harem. And so on to the very end, the pre- 
tended instruction is but in secret the connecting tie 
which holds together the laughing flowers going cflT 
from it to the right and to the left; whilst if ever at 
intervals this prosy thread of pure didactics is brought 
forward more obtrusively, it is so by way of foil, to 



198 ALEXANDER POPE. 

make more effective upon the eye the prodigality of 
the floral magnificence. 

We alHrm, therefore, that the didactic poet is so far 
from seeking even a secondary or remote object in the 
particular points of information which he may happen 
to communicate, that much rather he would prefer the 
having communicated none at all. We will explain 
ourselves by means of a little illustration from Pope, 
which will at the same time furnish us with a miniature 
type of what we ourselves mean by a didactic poem, 
both in reference to what it is and to what it is 7iot. 
In the Rape of the Lock there is a game at cards 
played, and played with a brilliancy of effect and felic- 
ity of selection, applied to the circumstances, which 
make it a sort of gem within a gem. This game was 
not in the first edition of the poem, but was an after- 
thought of Pope's, labored therefore with more than 
usual care. We regret that o?nbre, the game described, 
is no longer played, so that the entire skill with which 
the mimic battle is fought cannot be so fully appre- 
ciated as in Pope's days. The strategics have partly 
perished, which really Pope ought not to complain of, 
since he suffers only as Hannibal, Marlus, Sertorius, 
suffered before him. Enough, however, survives of 
what will tell its own storj'. For what is it, let us ask, 
that a poet has to do in such a case, supposing that he 
were disposed to weave a didactic poem out of a pack 
of cards, as Vida has out of the chess-board ? In de- 
scribmg any particular game, he does not seek to teach 
you that game — he postulates it as already known to 
yc u — but he relies upon separate resources. First, he 
will revive in the reader's eye. for picturesque effect, 



ALEXAxNDER POPE. 199 

the wcU-knowii personal distinctions of the several 
kings, knaves, &c., their appearances and their powers. 
Secondly, he will choose some game in which he may 
display a happy selection applied to the chances and 
turns of fortune, to the manoeuvres, to the situations of 
doubt, of brightening expectation, of sudden danger, of 
critical deliverance, or of final defeat. The interest of 
a war will be rehearsed. — lis est de paupere regno — 
that is true ; but the depth of the agitation on such 
occasions, whether at chess, at draughts, or at cards, 
is not measured of necessity by the grandeur of the 
stake ; he selects, in short, whatever fascinates the eye 
or agitates the heart by mimicry of life ; but so far 
from teacldng, he presupposes the reader already taught, 
in order that he may go along with the movement of 
the descriptions. 

Now, in treatmg a subject so vast, indeed so inex- 
haustible, as man, this eclecticism ceases to be pos- 
sible. Every part depends upon every other part. 
In such a nexus of truths to insulate is to annihilate. 
Severed from each other the parts lose their support, 
their coherence, their very meaning ; you have no 
liberty to reject or to choose. Besides, in treating the 
ordinary themes proper for what is called didactic 
poetry, — say, for instance, that it were the art of 
rearing silk-worms or bees, or suppose it to be hor- 
ticulture, landscape-gardening, hunting, or hawking, — ■ 
rarely does there occur anything polemic ; or if a 
slight controversy does arise, it is easily hushed asleep 
— it is stated in a line, it is answered in a couplet. 
But in the themes of Lucretius and Pope everything is 
polemic ; you move only through dispute, you pros- 



200 ALEXANDER POPE. 

per only by argument and never-ending controversy 
There is not positively one capital proposition or doc- 
trine about man, about his origin, his nature, his 
relations to God, or his prospects, but must be fought 
for with energy, watched at every turn with vigilance, 
and followed into endleai mazes, not under the choice 
of the writer, but under the inexorable dictation of the 
argument. 

Such a poem, so unwieldy, whilst at the same time 
so austere in its philosophy, together with the innumer- 
able polemic parts essential to its good faith and even 
to its evolution, would be absolutely unmanageable 
from excess and from disproportion, since often a 
secondary demur would occupy far more space than 
a principled section. Here lay the impracticable 
dilemma for Pope's Essay on Man. To satisfy the 
demands of the subject, was to defeat the objects of 
poetry. To evade the demands in the way that Pope 
has done, is to offer us a ruin for a palace. The very 
same dilemma existed for Lucretius, and with the very 
same result. The De Rerum Natura (which might, 
agreeably to its theme, have been entitled De Omnibus 
Rebus), and the Essay on Man (which might equally 
have borne the Lucretian title De Rerum Natura), are 
both, and from the same cause, fragments that could 
not have been completed. Both are accumulations of 
diamond-dust without principles of coherency. n a 
succession of pictures, such as usually form the niate- 
rials of didactic poems, the slightest thread of mter- 
dependency is sufficient. But, in works essentially 
and everywhere argumentative and polemic, to omit 
the connecting links, as often as they are insusceptible 



ALEXANDER POPE. 201 

of poetic effect, is to break vip the unify of the parts, 
and to undermine the foundations, in what expressly 
offers itself as a systematic and architectural whole 
Pope's poem has suffered even more than that of 
Lucretius from this want of cohesion. • It is indeed 
the realization of anarchy ; and one amusing- test of 
this may be found in the fact that different commen- 
tators have deduced from it the very opposite doc- 
trines. In some instances this apparent antinomy is 
douhiful, and dependent on the ambiguities or obscu- 
rities of the expression. But in others it is fairly de- 
duo ible ; and the cause lies in the elliptical structure 
of the work. The ellipsis, or (as sometimes it may be 
called) the chasm, may be filled up in two different 
modes essentially hostile; and he that supplies the 
hiatus, in effect determines the bias of the poem this 
way or that — to a religious or to a sceptical result. 
In this edition the commentary of Warburton has been 
retained, which ought certainly to have been dismissed. 
The Essay is, in effect, a Hebrew word with the vowel- 
points omitted ; and Warburton supplies one set of 
vowels, whilst Crousaz with equal right supplies a con- 
tradictory set. 

As a whole, the edition before us is certainly the 
most agreeable of all that we possess. The fidelity of 
jMr. Eoscoe to the interests of Pope's reputation, con- 
trasts pleasingly with the harshness at times of Bowles, 
and the reckless neutrality of Warton. In the editor 
of a great classic, we view it as a virtue, wearing the 
grace of loyalty, that he should refuse to expose 
frailties or defects in a spirit of exultation. Mr. 
Roscoe's own notes are written with a pocu iar good 

9# 



202 ALEXANDER POPE. 

sense, temperance, and kind feeling. The only ob- 
jection to them, which applies, however, still more to 
the notes of the former editors, is the want of com- 
pactness. They are not written under that austere 
instinct of coftipression and verbal parsimony, as the 
ideal merit in an annotator, which ought to govern all 
such ministerial labors in our days. Books are be- 
coming too much the oppression of the intellect, and 
cannot endure any longer the accumulation of undi- 
gested commentaries, or that species of diffhsion in 
editors which roots itself in laziness. The efforts of 
condensation and selection are painful ; and they 
are luxuriously evaded by reprinting indiscriminately 
whole masses of notes — though often in substance 
reiterating each other. But the interests of readers 
clamorously call for the amendment of this system. 
The principle of selection must now be applied even 
to the text of great authors. It is no longer advisable 
to reprint the whole of either Dryden or Pope. Not 
that we would wish to see their works mutilated. Let 
such as are selected be printed in the fullest integrity 
of the text. But some have lost their interest;'^ 
others, by the elevation of public morals since the 
days of those great wits, are felt to be now utterly 
unfit for general reading. Equally for the reader's 
sake and the poet's, the time has arrived when they 
may be advantageously retrenched ; for they are pain- 
fully at war with those feelings of entire and honorable 
esteem with which all lovers of exquisite intellectua 
brilliancy must wish to surround the name and memory 
of Pope. 



JNOTES. 



Note 1. Page 150. 

Charles I., for example, when Prince of Wales, and many others 
in his father's court, gained their known familiarity with Shaks- 
peai-e — not through the oi"iginal quartos, so slenderly diifused, 
nor through the first folio of 1623, but through the court repre- 
sentations of his chief dramas at Whitehall. 

Note 2. Page 156. 

The Canterbury Tales were not made public until 1380, or there- 
abouts ; but the composition must have cost thirty or more years ; 
not to mention that the work had probably been finished for some 
years before it was divulged. 

Note 3. Page 158. 

The reason why the broad distinctions between the two litera- 
tures of power and knowledge so little fix the attention, lies in the 
fact, that a vast proportion of books — history, biography, travels, 
niisKellaneous essays, &c. — lying in a middle zone, confound these 
di-^tinctions by interblending them. All that we call " amuse- 
Dieut" or " entertainment," is a diluted form of the power belong- 
ing to passion, and also a mixed form ; and whei'e threads of direct 
insfruclion intermingle in the texture with these threads of pojyer, 
this absorption of the duality into one representative nuance neutral- 
izes the separate perception of either. Fused into a tcrlium quid, 

(203) 



204 ALEXANDER POPE. 

or neutral state, they disappear to the popular eye as the repelling 
forces, which in fact they are. 

Note 4. Page 162. 

And this purity of diction shows itself in many points arguing 
great yigilance of attention, and also great anxiety for using the 
language powerfully as the most venerable of traditions, whan 
treating the most venerable of subjects. For instance, the Biblo 
never condescends to the mean colloquial preterites of chid for did 
chide, or writ for did write, but always uses the full-dress word 
chode, and wrote. Pope might have been happier had he read his 
Bible more ; but assuredly he would have improved his English. 
A question naturally arises, how it was that the elder writers — 
Shakspeare in particular (who had seen so little of higher so- 
ciety when he wrote his youthful poems of Lucrece and Adonis) — 
should have maintained so much purer a grammar ? Dr. John- 
son indeed, but most falsely, says that Shakspeare's grammar ia 
licentious. " The style of Shakspeare " (these are the exact 
words of the doctor in his preface) " was in itself ungrammatical, 
perplexed, and obscure." An audacious misrepresentation ! In 
the doctor himself, a legislator for the language, we undertake to 
show not only more numerically of trespasses against grammar, but 
(which is worse still) more unscholarlike trespasses. Shakspeare 
is singularly correct in grammar. One reason, we believe, was 
this : from the restoration of Charles II. decayed the ceremonious 
exteriors of society. Stiffness and reserve melted away before tho 
familiarity and impudence of French manners. Social meetings 
grew far more numerous as towns expanded ; social pleasure far 
more began now to depend upon conversation ; and conversation, 
growing less formal, quickened its pace. Hence came the call for 
rapid abbreviations: the '* is and 'twas, the can't find don't, of 
the two post-Miltonic genei ations arose under this impulse ; and 
the general impression has ever since subsisted amongst English 
writers, that language, instead of being an exquisitely beautiful 
vehicle for the thoughts — a robe that never can be adorned with 
too much care or piety — is in fact a dirty high-road, which all 
people detest whilst all are forced to use it, and to the keeping of 
which in repair no rational man ever contributes a trifle that is not 
forced from him by some severity of Quarter Sessions. The great 



20c 



sorrupter of English was the conversational instinct for rapidity. 
A more honorable source of corruption lay in the growth of new 
ideas, and the continual influx of foreign words to meet them. 
Spanish words arose, like reformado, prixado, desperado, and 
Freiicli ones past counting. But, as these retained their foreign 
forms of structure, they reacted to vitiate the language still more 
by introducing a piebald aspect of books which it seemed a matter 
of necessity to tolerate for the interests of wider thinking. The 
perfection of this horror was never attained except amongst the 
CerLians. 

Note 5. Page 170. 

It was after his connection with AVarburton that Pope introduced 
several of his living portraits into the Satires. 

Note G. Page 174. 
By what might seem a strange oversight, but which in fact is a 
very natural oversight to one who was not uttering one word in 
which he seriously believed. Pope, in a prose note on verse 207, 
roundly asserts " that the particular characters of women are more 
rartoiw than those of men." It is no evasion of this insufferable 
contradiction, that he couples with tlie greater variety of charac- 
ters in women a greater uniformity in wliat he presumes to be 
their ruling passion. Even as to this ruling passion he cannot 
agree with himself for ten minutes ; generally he says, that it is 
the love of pleasure ; but sometimes (as at verse 208) forgetting 
tiiis monotony, he ascribes to women a dualism of passions, — love 
of pleasure and love of power, — which dualism of itself must bo 
a source of self-conflict, and therefore of inexhaustible variety in 
chiH-acter : 

"Those only fixed, they first or last obey — 
The love of pleasure aud the love of sway." 

Note 7. Page 177. 

This refers to the Act of Parliament for burying corpses in 
woollen, which greatly disturbed the fashionable costume in coffins 
CO mine ilfuut. 



206 ALEXANDER POPE. 



Note 8. Page 179. 

The sons of the Duke having died, the title and estates were so 
settled as to descend through this daughter, -who married the Earl 
of Sunderland. In consequence of this arrangement, Spenser 
(until lately) displaced the great name of Churchill ; and the 
Earl became that second Duke of Marlborough, about whom Smol- 
lett tells us in his History of England (Reign of George II.) so 
remarkable and to this hour so mysterious a story. 

Note 9. Page 179. 

The Duchess died in the same year as Pope, namely, just in time 
by a few months to miss the Rebellion of 1745, and the second 
Pretender ; spectacles which for little reasons (vindictive or other- 
wise) both of them would have enjoyed until the spring of 1746. 

Note 10. Page 188. 

The Vestals not only renounced marriage, at least for those 
years in which marriage could be a natural blessing, but also left 
their fjithers' houses at an age the most trying to the human heart 
as regards the pangs of separation. 

Note 11. Page 202. 

We do not include the Dunciad in this list. On the contrary, 
the arguments by which it has been generally undervalued, as 
though antiquated by lapse of time and by the fading of names, 
are all unsound. "We ourselves hold it to be the greatest of Pope's 
efforts. But for that very reason we retire from the examination 
of it, which we had designed, as being wholly disproportioned to 
the nari'ow limits remaining to us. 



WILLIAM GODWIN* 

It is no duty of a notice so cursory to discuss Mr. 
Godwin as a philosopher. Mr. Gilfillan admits that 
in this character he did not earn much popularity by 
any absolute originality; and of such popularity as 
he may hav^e snatched surreptitiously without it, 
clearly all must have long since exhaled before it 
could be possible for "a respectable person" to de- 
mand of Mr. Gilhilan •' Who 's Godwin ? " A ques- 
tion which Mr. Gilfillan justly thinks it possible that 
"some readers," of the piesent day, November, 1845, 
may repeat. That is, we must presume, not who is 
Godwin the novelist ? but who is Godwin the political 
phdosopher? In that character he is now forgotten. 
And yet in that he carried one single shock into the 
bosom of English society, fearful but momentary, like 
that from the electric blow of the gymnotus ; or, per- 
haps, the intensity of the brief panic which, fifty years 
ago, he impressed on the public mind, may be more 
adequately expressed by the case of a ship in the 
middle ocean suddenly scraping, with her keel, a rag- 

♦ " A Gallery of Literary Portraits." By George Gilfillan. 

(207) 



29S WILLIAM GODWIN. 

ged rock, hanging for one moment, as if impaled upon 
the teeth of the dreadful sierra, then, by the mere 
impetus of her mighty sails, grinding audibly to 
lowder the fangs of this accursed submarine harrow, 
leaping into deep water again, and causing the panic 
of ruin to be simultaneous with the deep sense of de- 
liverance. In the quarto (that is, the original) edition 
of his " Political Justice," Mr. Godwin advanced against 
thrones and dominations, powers and principalities, 
with the air of some Titan slinger or monarchist 
from Thebes and Troy, saying, " Come hither, ye 
wretches, that I may give your flesh to the fowls of 
the air." But, in the second, or octavo edition, — and 
under what motive has never been explained, — he 
recoiled, absolutely, from the sound himself had made : 
everybody else was appalled by the fury of the chal- 
lenge; and, through the strangest of accidents, Mr. 
(jiodwin also was appalled. The second edition, as 
regards principles, is not a recast, but absolutely a trav- 
esty of the first : nay, it is all but a palinode. In this 
collapse of a tense excitement, I myself find the true 
reason for the utter extinction of the " Political Jus- 
tice," and of its author considered as a philosopher. 
Subsequently, he came forward as a philosophical 
speculator, in " The Enquirer," and elsewhere ; but 
here it was always some minor question which hs 
raised, or sonne mixed question, rather allied to philos- 
ophy than philosophical. As regarded the main cre- 
ative nisus of his philosophy, it remained undeniable 
that, in relation to the hostility of the world, he was 
like one who, in some piratical ship, should drop his 
anchor before Portsmouth, — should defy the navies of 



WILLIAM GODWIN. 209 

England to come out and fight, and then, whilst a thou- 
sand vessels were contending for the preference in blow- 
ing him out of the seas, should suddenly slip his 
cables and run. 

But it is as a novelist, not as a political theorist, that 
Mr. Gilfillan values Godwin ; and specially for his nove^ 
of " Caleb Williams." Now, if this were the eccentric 
judgment of one unsupported man,, however able, and 
had received no countenance at all from others, it 
might be injudicious to detain the reader upon it. It 
happens, however, that other men of talent have raised 
" Caleb Williams " to a station in the first rank of nov- 
els ; whilst many more, amongst whom I am compelled 
to class myself, can see in it no merit of any kind. 
A schism, which is really perplexing, exists in this 
particular case ; and, that the reader may judge for 
himself, I will state the outline of the plot, out of which 
it is that the whole interest must be supposed to grow ; 
for the characters are nothing, being mere generalities, 
and very slightly developed. Thirty-five years it is 
since I read the book ; but the nakedness of the incidents 
makes them easily rememberable. — Falkland, who 
passes for a man of a high-minded and delicate honat, 
but is, in fact, distinguished only by acute sensibil- 
ity to the opinion of the world, receives a dreadful 
insult in a most public situation. It is, indeed, more 
than an insult, being the most brutal of outrages. In 
a ball-room, where the local gentry and his neighbors 
are assembled, he is knocked down, kicked, dragged 
along the floor, by a ruffian squire, named Tyrrel. It 
is vain to resist ; he himself is slightly built, and hia 
antagonist is a powerful man. In these circumstances, 
14 



210 WILLIAM GODWIN. 

and under the eyes of all the ladies in the county 
witnessing every step of his humiliation, no man could 
severely have blamed him, nor would English law 
have severely punished him, if, in the frenzy of his 
agitation, he had seized a poker and laid his assailant 
dead upon the spot. Such allowance does the natural 
feeling of men, such allowance does the sternness of 
the judgment-seat, make for human infirmity when 
tried to extremity by devilish provocation. But Falk- 
land does not avenge himself thus : he goes out, makes 
his little arrangements, and, at a later hour of the 
night, he comes, by surprise, upon Tyrrel, and mur- 
ders him in the darkness. Here is the first vice in the 
story. With any gleam of generosity in his nature, 
no man in pursuit of vengeance would have found it 
in such a catastrophe. That an enemy should die by 
apoplexy, or by lightning, would be no gratification 
of wrath to an impassioned pursuer : to make it a 
retribution for him, he himself must be associated to 
the catastrophe in the consciousness of his victim. 
Falkland for some time evades or tramples on detec- 
tion. But his evil genius at last appears in the shspe 
of Caleb Williams ; and the agency through which 
Mr. Caleb accomplishes his mission is not that of any 
grand passion, but of vile eavesdropping inquisitive- 
ness. Mr. Falkland had hired him as an amanuensis; 
and in that character Caleb had occasion to observe 
that some painful remembrance weighed upon his 
master's mind; and that something or other — docu- 
ments or personal memorials connected with this re- 
membrance — were deposited in a trunk visited at 
intervals by Falkland. But of- what nature could these 



WILLIAM GODWIN. 211 

meuicrials be ? Surely Mr. Falkland would uot keep 
ill brandy the gory head of Tyrrel; and anything 
short of that could not proclaim any murder at all, 
much less the particular murder. Strictly speaking 
nothing- could be in the trunk, of a nature to connect 
Falkland with the murder more closely than the cir- 
cumstances had already connected him; and those 
circumstances, as we know, had been insufficient. It 
puzzles one, therefore, to imagine any evidence which 
the trunk could yield, unless there were secreted within 
it some known personal property of Tyrrel's ; in which 
case the aspiring Falkland had committed a larceny 
as well as murder. Caleb, meantime, wastes no 
labor in hypothetic reasonings, but resolves to have 
ocular satisfaction in the matter. An opportunity 
ofTers ; an alarm of fire is given in the day-time ; and 
whilst Mr. Falkland, with his people, is employed on 
the lawn manning the buckets, Caleb skulks ofT to the 
trunk ; feeling, probably, that his first duty was to 
himself, by extinguishing the burning fire of curiosity 
in his own heart, after which there might be time 
enough for his second duty, of assisting to extinguish 
the fire in his master's mansion. Falkland, however, 
misses the absentee. To pursue him, to collar him, 
and, we may hope, to kick him, are the work of a 
moment. Had Caleb found time for accomplishing 
his inquest? I really forget; but no matter. Either 
now, or at some luckier hour, he does so : he becomes 
master of Falkland's secret — consequently, as both 
fancy, of Falkland's life. At this point commences a 
flight of Caleb, and a chasing of Falkland, in order to 
watch his motions, which forms the most spirited part 



212 WILLIAM GODWIN. 

of the story. Mr. Godwin tells us that he derived thii 
situation, the continual flight and continual pursuit, 
from a South American tradition of some Spanish 
vengeance. Always the Spaniard was riding in to 
any given town on the road, when his d,.^stined victim 
was riding 02it at the other end ; so that the relations 
of "whereabouts" were never for a moment lost: the 
trail was perfect. Now, this might be possible in cer- 
tain countries; but in England! — heavens! could 
not Caleb double upon his master, or dodge round a 
gate (like Falkland when he murdered Mr. Tyrrel), or 
take a headlong plunge into London, where the scent 
might have lain cold for forty years ? =*= Other acci- 
dents by thousands would interrupt the chase. On the 
hundredth day, for instance, after the flying parties 
had become well known on the road, Mr. Falkland 
would drive furiously up to some King's Head or 
White Lion, putting his one question to the waiter, 
" Where 's Caleb ? " And the waiter would reply, 
"Where's Mr. Caleb, did you say, sir? Why, he 
went off at five by the Highflyer, booked inside the 
whole way to Doncaster; and Mr. Caleb is now, sir, 
precisely forty-five miles ahead." Then would Falk- 
land furiously demand " four horses on ; " and then 
would the waiter plead a contested election in excuse 
for having no horses at all. Really, for dramatic 

* " Forty years : " so long, according to my recollection of 
Boswell, did Dr. Johnson walk about London before he met an 
old Derbyshire friend, who also had been walking about Lon- 
don with the same punctual regularity for every day of the 
same forty years. The nodes of intersection did not come round 
sooner. 



•WILLIAIiI bODWIN. 213 

offect, it is a pity that the tale were not translated for- 
ward to the days of railroads. Sublime would look 
the fiery pursuit, and the panic-stricken flight, when 
racing from Fleetwood to Liverpool, to Birmingham, 
to London ; then smoking along the Great Western, 
where Mr. Caleb's forty-five miles ahead would avail 
him little, to Bristol, to Exeter ; thence doubling back 
upon London, like the steam leg in Mr. H. G. Bell's 
admirable story. 

But, after all, what was the object, and what the 
result of all this racing ? Once I saw two young men 
facing each other upon a high road, but at a furlong's 
distance, and playing upon the foolish terrors of a 
young woman by continually heading her back from 
cue to the other, as alternately she approached towards 
either. Signals of some dreadful danger in the north 
being made by the northern man, back the poor girl 
flew towards the southern, who, in Ms turn, threw out 
pantomimic warnings of an equal danger to the south. 
And thus, like a tennis-ball, the simple creature kept 
rebounding from one to the other, until she could move 
no further through sheer fatigue ; and then first the 
question occurred to her. What was it that she had 
been running from ? The same question seems to 
have struck at last upon the obtuse mind of Mr. Caleb ; 
it was quite as easy to play the part of hunter, as that 
of hunted game, and likely to be cheaper. He turns 
therefore sharp round upon his master, who in his turn 
is disposed to fly, when suddenly the sport is brought 
to a dead lock by a constable, who tells the murdering 
squire that he is " wanted." Caleb has lodged informa- 
tions ; all parties meet for a final " reunion " before the 



214 WILLIAM GODWIN. 

magistrate; Mr. Falkland, oddly enough, regards him- 
self in the light of an ill-iised. man ; which theory of 
the case, even more oddly, seems to be adopted, by 
Mr. Gilfillan ; but, for all that he can say, Mr. Falk- 
land is fully committed ; and as laws were made for 
every degree, it is plain that Mr. Falkland (however 
much of a pattern-man) is in some danger of swing- 
ing. But the catastrophe is intercepted ; a novelist 
may raise his hero to the peerage ; he may even con- 
fer the garter upon him ; but it shocks against usage 
and courtesy that he should hang him. The circu- 
lating libraries would rise in mutiny, if he did. And 
therefore it is satisfactory to believe (for all along I 
speak from memory), that Mr. Falkland reprieves him- 
self from the gallows by dying of exhaustion from his 
travels. 

Such is the fable of '• Caleb Williams," upon which, 
by the way, is built, I think, Colman's drama of " The 
Iron Chest." I have thought, it worth the trouble 
(whether for the reader, or for myself), of a flying 
abstract ; and chiefly with a view to the strange col- 
lision of opinions as to the merit of the work ; some, 
as I have said, exalting it to the highest class of novels, 
others depressing it below the lowest of those which 
achieve any notoriety. They who vote against it are 
in a large majority. The Germans, whose literature 
oflers a free port to all the eccentricities of the earth, 
have never welcomed " Caleb Williams." Chenier, tlie 
ruling litterateur of Paris, in the days of Napoleon, 
when reviewing the literature of his own day, dis- 
misses Caleb contemptuously as coarse and vulgar. 
It is not therefore -to the German taste ; it is not to the 



WILLUM GODWIN. 215 

French. And as to our own country, Mr. Gilfillan is 
undoubtedly wrong in supposing that it " is in every 
circulating library, and needs, more frequently than 
almost any novel, to be replaced." If this were so, in 
presence of the immortal novels which for one hun- 
dred and fifty years have been gathering into the 
garners of our English literature, I should look next 
to see the race of rnen returning from venison and 
wh cat to their primitive diet of acorns. But I believe 
th)t the number of editions yet published, would at 
once discredit this account of the book's popularity. 
Neither is it likely, a priori, that such a popularity 
could arise even for a moment. The interest from 
secret and vindictive murder, though coarse, is un- 
doubtedly deep. What would make us thrill ni real 
life, — the case for instance of a neighbor lying under 
the suspicion of such a murder, — would make us thrill 
in a novel. But then it must be managed with art, 
and covered with mystery. For a long time it m.ust 
continue doubtful, both as to the fact, and the circum- 
stances, and the motive. Whereas, in the case of 
Mr. Falkland, there is little mystery of any kind ; not 
much, and only for a short time, to Caleb ; and none 
at all to the reader, who could have relieved the curi- 
osity of Mr. Caleb from the first, if he were placed in 
communication with him. 

Differing so much from Mr. Gilfillan, as to the 
effectiveness of the novel, I am only the more im- 
pressed with the eloquent images and expressions by 
which he has conveyed his own sense of its power. 
Power there must be, though many of us cannot 
discern it, to react upon us, through impressions so 



216 WILLIAM GODWIN. 

powerful in other minds. Some of Mr. Gilfillan's im- 
pressions, as they are clothed in striking images by 
himself, I will here quote : — " His," Godwin's " heat is 
never that of the sun with all his beams around him ; 
but of the round, rayless orb seen shining from the 
summit of Mont Blanc, still and stripped in the black 
ether. He has more passion than imagination. And 
even his passion he has learned more by sympathy 
than by personal feeling. And, amid his most tem- 
pestuous scenes, you see the calm and stern eye of 
philosophic analysis looking on. His imagery is not 
copious, nor always original ; but its sparseness is its 
strength — the flash comes sudden as the lightning. No 
preparatory flourish, or preliminary sound ; no sheets 
of useless splendor : each figure is a fork of fire, 
which strikes and needs no second blow. Nay, often 
his images are singularly common-place, and you 
wonder how they move you so, till you resolve this 
into the power of the hand which jaculates its own 
energy in them.'''' And again, " His novels resemble 
the paintings of John Martin, being a gallery, nay a 
world, in themselves. In both, monotony and man- 
nerism are incessant ; but the monotony is that of the 
sounding deep, the mannerism that of the thunderbolts 
of heaven. Martin might append to his one continual 
flash of lightning, which is present in all his pictures, — • 
now to reveal a deluge, now to garland the brow of a 
fiend — now to rend the veil of a temple, and now to 
guide the invaders through the breach of a city, — the 
words, John Martin, his mark. Godwin's novels are 
not less terribly distinguished to those who understand 



WILLIAM GODWIN. 2J7 

their cipher — the deep scar of misery branded upon 
the brow of the ' victim of society.' " 

And as to the earliest of these novels, the " Caleb 
Williams," he says, " There is about it a stronger 
suction and swell of interest than in any novel we 
know, with the exception of one or two of Sir 
Walter's. You are in it ere you are aware. You 
put your hand playfully into a child's, and are sur- 
prised to find it held in the grasp of a giant. It 
becomes a fascination. Struggle you may, and kick, 
but he holds you by his glittering eye*." In reference, 
again, to " St. Leon," the next most popular of God- 
win's novels, there is a splendid passage upon the 
glory and pretensions of the ancient alchemist, in the 
infancy of scientific chemistry. It rescues the char- 
acter from vulgarity, and displays it idealized as 
sometimes, perhaps, it must have been. I am sorry 
that it is too long for extracting ; but, in compensation 
to the reader, I quote two very picturesque sentences, 
describing what, to Mr. Gilfillan, appears the quality 
of Godwin's style : — " It is a smooth succession of short 
and simple sentences, each clear as crystal, and none 
ever distracting the attention from the subject to its 
own construction. It is a style in which you cannot 
^j.plain how the total effect rises out of the individual 
parts, and which is forgotten as entirely during perusal 
\s in the pane of glass through which you gaze at a 
comet or a star." Elsewhere, and limiting his remark 
to the style of the " Caleb Williams," he says finely : — 
'The writing, though far from elegant or finished, has 
m parts the rude power of those sentences which 



218 WILMAM GODWIN. 

criminals, martyrs, and maniacs, scrawl upon their walls 
or windows in the eloquence of desperation."* 

These things perplex me. The possibility that any 
individual in the minority can have regarded Godwin 
with such an eye, seems to argue that we of the 
majority must be wrong. Deep impressions seem to 
justify themselves. We may have failed to perceive 
things which are in the object; but it is not so easy 
for others to perceive things which are not ; or, at 
least, hardly in a case like this, where (though a 
minority) these '^others" still exist in number sufficient 
to check and to confirm each other. On the other 
hand, Godwin's name seems sinking out of remem- 
brance; and he is remembered less by the novels that 
succeeded, or by the philosophy that he abjured, than 
as the man that had Mary Wolstonecraft for his wife, 
Mrs. Shelley for his daughter, and the immortal Shelley 
as his son-in-law. 



* "Desperation." Yet, as martyrs ai'e concerned in the pic- 
ture, it ought to have been said, " of desperation and of farewell 
to earth," or something equivalent. 



JOHN FOSTER. 

Mr. GiLFiLLAN* possibly overrates the power of this 
essayist, and the hold which he has upon the public 
mind. It is singular, meantime, that whatever might 
be its degree, much or little, originally his influence 
was due to an accident of position which in some 
countries would have tended to destroy it. He was a 
Dissenter. Now, in England, tliat sometimes operates 
as an advantage. To dissent from the established 
form of religion, which could not affect the value of a 
writer's speculations, may easily become the means 
of diffusing their reputation, as well as of facilitating 
their introduction. And in the following way : The 
great mass of the reading population are absolutely in- 
different to such deflexions from the national standard. 
The man, suppose, is a Baptist : but to be a Baptist is 
still to be a Protestant, and a Protestant agreeing with 
his countrymen in everything essential to purity of 
life and faith. So far there is the most entire neutrality 
in the public rnind, and readiness to receive any im- 
pression which the man's powers enable him to make. 

• " Gallery of Literary Portraits." 



220 ' JOHN FOSTER. 

There is, indeed, so absolute a carelessness for all 
inoperative shades of religious difference lurking- in 
the background, that even the ostentatiously liberal 
hardly feel it a case for parading their liberality. But, 
on the other hand, his own sectarian party are as ener 
getic to push him forward as all others are passive. 
They favor him as a brother, and also as one whose 
credit will react upon their common sect. And this 
favor, pressing like a wedge upon the unresisting 
neutrality of the public, soon succeeds in gaining for 
any able writer among sectarians an exaggerated reputa- 
tion. Nobody is against him ; and a small section 
acts /or him in a spirit of resolute partisanship. 

To this accident of social position, and to his con- 
nection with the Eclectic Review, Mr. Foster owed 
his first advantageous presentation before the public. 
The misfortune of many an able writer is, not that he 
is rejected by the world, but that virtually he is never 
brought conspicuously before them: he is not dis- 
missed unfavorably, but he is never effectually intro- 
duced. From this calamity, at the outset, Foster was 
saved by his party. I happened myself to be in 
Bristol at the moment when his four essays were first 
issuing from the press ; and everywhere I heard so 
pointed an account of the expectations connected with 
Foster by his religious party, that I made it a duty to 
read his book without delay. It is a distant incident 
to look back upon — gone by for more than thirty 
years ; but I remember my first impressions, which 
were these . — first, That the novelty or weight of the 
thinking was hardly sufficient to account for the sudden 
popularity without souxq extra influence at work; and, 



JOHN FOSTER. 22_ 

secondly, That the contrast was remarkable between 
the uncolored style of his general diction, and the 
brilliant felicity of occasional images embroidered 
upon the sober ground of his text. The splendor did 
not seem spontaneous, or gro\ving up as part of the 
texture within the loom ; it was intermitting, and 
seemed as extraneous to the substance as the flowers 
which are chalked for an evening upon the floors of 
ball-rooms. 

Subsequently, I remarked two other features of 
difference in his manner, neither of which has been 
overlooked by Mr. Gilfillan, namely, first. The unsocial 
gloom of his eye, travelling over all things with 
dissatisfaction ; second (which in our days seemed 
unaccountable), the remarkable limitation of his knowl- 
edge. You might suppose the man, equally by his 
ignorance of passing things and by his ungenial 
moroseness, to be a specimen newly turned out from 
the silent cloisters of La Trappe. A monk he seemed 
by the repulsion of his cloistral feelings, and a monk 
by the superannuation of his knowledge. Both pecu- 
liarities he drew in part from that same sectarian 
position, operating for evil, to which, in another 
direction as a conspicuous advantage, he had been 
indebted for his favorable public introduction. It is 
not that Foster was generally misanthropic ; neither 
was he, as a sectarian, "a good hater" at any special 
angle ; that is, he was not a zealous hater ; but, by 
temperament, and in some measure by situation, as 
one pledged to a polemic attitude by his sect, \Aras 
a general disliker and a general suspecter. His con- 
fidence in human nature was small ; for he saw the 



222 JOHN FOSTER. 

clay of the composite statue, but not its gold ; and 
apparently his satisfaction with himself was not much 
greater. Inexhaustible was his jealousy; and for that 
reason his philanthropy was everywhere checked by 
frost and wintry chills. This blight of asceticism in 
his nature is not of a kind to be briefly illustrated, for 
it lies diflTused through the texture of his writings. But 
of his other monkish characteristic, his abstraction 
from the movement and life of his own age, I may 
give this instance, which I observed by accident about 
a year since in some late edition of his Essays. 
He was speaking of the term radical as used to 
designate a large political party ; but so slightly was 
he acquainted with the history of that party, so little 
had he watched the growth of this important interest 
in our political system, that he supposes the term 
" Radical " to express a mere scoff' or movement of 
irony from the antagonists of that party. It stands, 
as he fancies, upon the same footing as " Puritan,'' 
•' Roundhead," &c., amongst our fathers, or " Swaddler," 
applied to the Evangelicals amongst ourselves. This 
may seem a trifle ,* nor do I mention the mistake for 
any evil which it can lead to, but for the dreamy inat- 
tention which It argues to what was most important in 
the agitations around him. It may cause nothing ; but 
how much does it presume ? Could a man, interested 
in the motion of human principles, or the revolutions of 
his own country, have failed to notice the rise of a new 
party which loudly proclaimed its own mission and 
purposes in the very name which it assumed ? The 
term "Radical" was used elliptically : Mr. Hunt, and 
all about him, constantly gave out that they were 



JOHN FOSTER, 223 

reformers who went to the root — radical reiormers ; 
wliilst all previous political parties they held to be 
merely masquerading as reformers, or, at least, want- 
ing in the determination to go deep enough. The 
party name "Radical" was no insult of enemies; it 
was a cognizance self-adopted by the party which it 
designates, and worn with pride ; and whatever might 
be the degree of personal weight belonging to Mr. 
Hunt, no man, who saw into the composition of society 
amongst ourselves, could doubt that his principles were 
destined to a most extensive diffusion — were sure of 
a permanent settlement amongst the great party in- 
terests — and, therefore, sure of disturbing thencefor- 
wards forever the previous equilibrium of forces in 
our English social system. To mistake the origin or 
history of a word is nothing ; but to mistake it, when 
that history of a word ran along with the history of a 
thing destined to change all the aspects of our English 
present and future, implies a sleep of Epimenides 
amongst the shocks which are unsettling the realities of 
earth. 

The four original essays, by which Foster was first 
known to the public, are those by which he is still best 
known. It cannot be said of them that they have any 
•practical character calculated to serve the uses of life. 
They terminate in speculations that apply themselves 
little enough to any business of the world. Whether 
a man should write memoirs of himself cannot have 
any personal interest for one reader in a myriad. 
And two of the essays have even a misleading ten- 
dency. That upon " Decision of Character " places a 
very exaggerated v^iluation upon one quality of human 



224 JOHN FOSTER. 

temperament, w'licli is neither rare, nor at all necessa- 
rily allied with the most elevated features of moral 
grandeur. Coleridge, because he had no business tal- 
ents himself, admired them preposterously in others 
or fancied them vast when they existed only in a slight 
degree. And, upon the same principle, I suspect that 
]\Ir. Foster rated so highly the quality of decision in 
matters of action, chiefly because he wanted it himself. 
Obstinacy is a gift more extensively sown than Foster 
was willing to admit. And his scale of appreciation, 
if it were practically applied to the men of history, 
would lead to judgments immoderately perverse. Mil- 
ton would rank far below Luther. In reality, as Mr. 
Gilfillan justly remarks, " Decision of character is not, 
strictly, a moral power ; and it is extremely dangerous 
to pay that homage to any intellectual quality, which is 
sacred to virtue alone." But even this estimate must 
often tend to exaggeration ; for the most inexorable 
decision is much more closely connected with bodily 
differences of temperament than with any superiority 
of mind. It rests too much upon a physical basis ; 
and, of all qualities whatever, it is the most liable to 
vicious varieties of degeneration. The worst result 
from this essay is not merely speculative ; it trains the 
feelings to false admirations ; and upon a path which 
is the more dangerous, as the besetting temptation of 
our English life lies already towards an estimate much 
too high of all qualities bearing upon the active and the 
practical. We need no spur in that direction. 

The essay upon the use of technically religious 
language seems even worse by its tendency, although 
the necessities of the subject will forever neutralize 



JOHN FOSTER. 225 

Foster's advice. Mr. Gilfillan is, in this' instance dis- 
posed to defend him : " Foster does not ridicule the 
use, but the abuse, of technical language, as applied 
to divine things; and proposes, merely as an experi- 
ment, to translate it in accommodation to fastidious 
tastes." Safely, however, it may be assumed, that, in 
all such cases, the fastidious taste is but another aspect 
of hatred to religious themes, — a hatred which there 
is neither justice nor use in attempting to propitiate. 
Cant words ouglit certainly to be proscribed, as de- 
grading to the majesty of religion: the word "prayer- 
ful," for instance, so commonly used of late years, 
seems objectionable ; and such words as " savory," 
which is one of those cited by Foster himself, are 
absolutely abominable, when applied to spiritual or 
intellectual objects. It is not fastidiousness, but man- 
liness and good feeling, which are outraged by such 
vulgarities. On the other hand, the word " grace " 
expresses an idea so exclusively belonging to Chris- 
tianity, and so indispensable to the wholeness of its 
philosophy, that any attempt to seek for equivalent 
terms of mere human growth, or amongst the vocabu- 
laries of mere worldly usage, must terminate ia con- 
scious failure, or else in utter self-delusion. Chris- 
tianity, having introduced many ideas that are absolutely 
new, such as faith, charity, holiness, the nature 
of God, of human frailty, &c., is as much entitled 
(nay as much obliged and pledged) to a peculiar lin- 
guage and terminology as chemistry. Let a laan try 
if he can find a word in the market-place fitted to bo 
the substitute for the word gas ox alkali. The danger, 
in fact, lies exactly in the opposite direction to that 
15 10^ 



226 JOHN FOSTER. 

indicated by Foster. No fear that men of elegiinl 
taste should be revolted by the use of what, after allj 
is scriptural language ; for it is plain that he who could 
be so revolted, wants nothing seriously with religion. 
But there is great fear that any general disposition to 
angle for readers of extra refinement, or to court the 
effeminately fastidious, by sacrificing the majestic sim- 
plicities of scriptural diction, would and must end in 
a ruinous dilution of religious truths ; along with the 
characteristic language of Christian philosophy, would 
■ xliale its characteristic doctrines. 



WILLIAM HAZLITT.* 

This man, who would have drawn in the scaljs 
against a select vestry of Fosters, is for the present 
deeper in the world's oblivion than the man with whom 
I here connect his name. That seems puzzling. For, 
if Hazlitt were misanthropic, so was Foster : both as 
Avriters were splenetic and more than peevish ; but 
Hazlitt requited his reader for the pain of travelling 
through so gloomy an atmosphere, by the rich vegeta- 
tion which his teeming intellect threw up as it moved 
along. The soil in his brain was of a volcanic fertility ; 
whereas, in Foster, as in some tenacious clay, if the 
life were deep, it was slow and sullen in its throes. 
The reason for at all speaking of them in connec- 
tion is, that both were essayists ; neither in fact writing 
anything of note except essays, moral or critical ; and 
both were bred at the feet of Dissenters. But how 
diflerent were the results from that connection ! Foster 
turned it to a blessing, winning the jewel that is most 
of all to be coveted, peace and the fallentis semita 
viicB. Hazlitt, on the other hand, sailed wilfully away 



♦ " Gallery of Literary Portraits," By George Gilfillan. 

(227) 



228 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

from this sheltering harbor of his father's profession, — 
for sheltering it might have proved to hiniy and did 
prove to his yoath, — only to toss ever afterwards as a 
drifting wreck at the mercy of storms. Hazlitt w^as 
not one of those who could have illustrated the benefits 
of a connection with a sect, that is, with a small confed- 
eration hostile by position to a larger ; for the hostility 
from without, iu order to react, presumes a concord 
from within. Nor does his case impeach the correct- 
ness of what I have said on that subject in speaking 
of Foster. He owed no introduction to the Dissenters ; 
but it was because he would owe none. The Ishmael- 
ite, whose hand is against every man, yet smiles at 
the approach of a brother, and gives the salutation of 
" Peace be with you ! " to the tribe of his father. But 
Hazlitt smiled upon no man, nor exchanged tokens of 
peace with the nearest of fraternities. Wieland, in his 
" Oberon," says of a benign patriarch — 

" His eye a smile on all creation beamed." 

Travestied as to one word, the line would have described 
Hazlitt — 

" His eye a scowl on all creation beamed." 

This inveterate misanthropy was constitutional ; exas- 
perated it certainly had been by accidents of life, by 
disappointments, by mortifications, by insults, and still 
more by having wilfully placed himself in collision 
from the first with all the interests that were in the 
sunshine of this world, and with all the persons that 
were then powerful in England. But my impression 
was, if I had a right to have any impression with regard 
to one whom I knew so slightly, that no change of 



WILLIAM IIAZLITT. 229 

position or of fortunes could have brought Hazlitt into 
reconciliation with the fashion of this world, or of this 
England, or " this now." It seemed to me that he 
natcd tliose whom hollow custom obliged him to call liis 
" friends," considerably more than those whom notori- 
ous differences of opinion entitled him to rank as his 
enemies. At least within the ring of politics this was 
so. Between those particular Whigs whom literature 
had conrected him with, and the whole gang of us 
Conservatives, he showed the same difference in his 
mode of fencing and parrying, and even in his style of 
civilities, as between the domestic traitor hiding a 
stiletto among his robes of peace, and the bold enemy 
who 'sends a trumpet before him, and rides up sword- 
in-hand against your gates. Whatever is — so much 
I conceive to liave been a fundamental lemma for 
Hazlitt — is wro7ig. So much he thought it safe to 
postulate. How it was wrong, might require an im- 
practicable investigation ; you might fail for a century 
to discover : but that it was wrong, he nailed down as 
a point of faith, that could stand out against all counter- 
presumptions from argument, or counter-evidences from 
experience. A friend of his it was, a friend wishing- 
to love him, and admiring him almost to extravagance, 
who told me, in illustration of the dark, sinister gloom 
which sat forever upon Hazlitt's countenance and 
gestures, that involuntarily when Hazlitt put his hand 
within his waistcoat (as a mere unconscious trick of 
habit), lie himself felt a sudden recoil of fear, as from 
one wlio was searching for a hidden dagger. Like " a 
Moore of Malabar," as described in the Faery Queen, 
at intervals Hazlitt threw up his angry eyes, and dark 



230 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

locks, as if wishing to affront the sun, or to search 
the ail* for hostility. And the same friend, on another 
occasion, described the sort of feudal fidelity to his 
belligerent duties, which in company seemed to ani- 
mate Hazlitt, as though he were mounting guard on all 
the citadels of malignity, under some sacrament\:u 
?mlitaire, by the following trait, — that, if it had hap- 
pened to Hazlitt to be called out of the room, or to 
be withdrawn for a moment from the current of the 
general conversation, by a fit of abstraction, or by a 
private whisper to himself from some person sitting at 
his elbow, always, on resuming his place as a party to 
what might be called the public business of the compa- 
ny, he looked round him with a mixed air of suspicion 
and defiance, such as seemed to challenge everybody by 
some stern adjuration into revealing whether, duriiig his 
own absence or inattention, anything had been said 
demanding condign punishment at his hands. "Has 
any man uttered or presumed to insinuate," he seemed 
to insist upon knowing, " during this interr^g)iu7n, 
things that I ought to proceed against as treasonable 
to the interests which I defend ?" He had the unrest- 
ing irritability of Rousseau, but in a nobler shape ; 
for Rousseau transfigured every possible act or desigc 
of his acquaintances into some personal relation t& 
himself. The vile act was obviously meant, as a child 
coulc? understand, to injure the person of Rrusseau, or 
h'-i interests, or his reputation. It was meant to wound 
hi's feelings, or to misrepresent his acts calumniously, 
or secretly to supplant his footing. But, on the con- 
trary, Hazlitt viewed all personal affronts or casual 
slights towards himself, as tending to som^lih'ng more 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 23 

general, and masking under a pretended horror of 
Hazlitt, the author, a real hatred, deeper than it was 
always safe to avow, for those social interests which he 
was reputed to defend. " It was not Hazlitt whom the 
wretches struck at; no, no — it was democracy, or i> 
was freedom, or it was Napoleon, whose shadow they 
saw in the rear of Hazlitt; and Napoleon, not for any* 
thing in him that might be really bad, but in revenge 
of that consuming wrath against the thrones of Chris- 
tendom, for which (said Hazlitt) let us glorify his name 
eternally." 

Yet Hazlitt, like other men, and perhaps with more 
bitterness than other men, sought for love and for 
intervals of rest, in which all anger might sleep, and 
enmity might be laid aside like a travelling-dress, after 
tumultuous journeys : 

" Though the sea-horse on the ocean 
Own no dear domestic cave, 
Yet he slumbers without motion 
On the still and halcyon waTC. 

If, on windy days, the raven 

Gambol like a dancing skiff, 
Wot the less he loves his haven 

On the bosom of a cliff. 

If almost with eagle pinion 

O'er the Alps the chamois roam, 

Yet he has some small dominion, 
Which, no doubt, he calls his home." 

But Hazlitt, restless as the sea-horse, as the raven, 
as the chamois, found not their respites from storm ; 
he sought, but sought in vain. And for him the 



232 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

closing stanza of that little poem remained true to h's 
dying hour. In the person of the " Wandering Jew," 
he might complain, — 

*' Day and night my toils redouble : 
Never nearer to the goal, 
Night and day I feel the trouble 
Of the wanderer in my soul." 

Domicile he had not, round whose hearth his affections 
might gather ; rest he had not for the sole of his 
burning foot. One chance of regaining some peace, 
or a chance as he trusted for a time, was torn from 
him at the moment of gathering its blossoms. He 
had been divorced from his wife, not by the law of 
England, which would have argued criminality in her, 
but by Scottish law, satisfied with some proof of 
frailty in himself. Subsequently he became deeply 
fascinated by a young woman, in no very elevated 
rank, — for she held some domestic office of superin- 
tendence in a boarding-house kept by her father, — but 
of interesting person, and endowed with strong intel- 
lectual sensibilities. She had encouraged Hazlitt ; 
had gratified him by reading his works with intelligent 
sympath}'; and. under what form of duplicity it is 
hard to say, had partly engaged her faith to Hazlitt 
as his future wife, whilst secretly she was holding a 
correspondence, too tender to be misinterpreted, with 
a gentleman resident in the same establishment. Sus- 
picions were put aside for a time ; but they returned, 
and gathered too thickly for Hazlitt's penetration to 
cheat itself any longer. Once and forever he re- 
solved to satisfy himself. On a Sunday, fatal to him 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 2^3 

and his farewell hopes of domestic happiness, he had 
reason to believe that she, whom he now loved to 
excess, had made some appointment out-of-doors with 
his riv&l. It was in London ; and through the crowds 
of Lor.don, Hazlitt followed her steps to the rendez- 
vous. Fancying herself lost in the multitude that 
streamed through Lincolns-iim-fields, the treacherous 
young woman met her more favored lover without 
alarm, and betrayed, too clearly for any further decep- 
tion, the state of her aflfections by the tenderness of 
her manner. There went out the last light that threw 
a guiding ray over the storm-vexed course of Hazlitt. 
He was too much in earnest, and he had witnessed 
too much, to be deceived or appeased. "I whistled 
her down the wind," was his own account of the catas- 
trophe ; but, in doing so, he had torn his own heart- 
strings, entangled with her "jesses." Neither did he, 
as others would have done, seek to disguise his misfor- 
tune. On the contrary, he cared not for the ridicule 
attached to such a situation amongst the unfeelina: ' 
the wrench within had been too profound to leave 
room for sensibility to the sneers outside. A fast 
friend of his at that time, and one who never ceased 
to be his apologist, described him to me as having 
become absolutely maniacal during the first pressure 
of this atfliction. He went about proclaiming the 
case, and insisting on its details, to every stranger 
that would listen. He even published the whole story 
to the world, in his " Modern Pygmalion." And peo- 
ple generally, who could not be aware of his feelings, 
or the way in which this treachery acted upon his 
mind as a ratification of all other treacheries and 



234 WILLUM HAZLITT. 

wrongs that he had suffered through life, laughed a 
him, or expressed disgust for him as too coarsely 
indelicate in making such disclosures. But there was 
no indelicacy in such an act of confidence, growing, as 
it did, out of his lacerated heart. It was an explosion 
of frenzy. He threw out his clamorous anguish to the 
clouds, and to the winds, and to the air; caring not who 
might listen, who might sympathize, or who might sneer. 
Pity was no demand of his : laughter was no wrong : 
the sole necessity for him was — to empty his over- 
burdened spirit. 

After this desolating experience, the exasperation 
of Hazlitt's political temper grew fiercer, darker, 
steadier. His " Life of Napoleon " was prosecuted 
subsequently to this, and perhaps under this remem- 
brance, as a reservoir that might receive all the vast 
overflows of his wrath, much of which was not merely 
political, or in a spirit of bacchanalian partisanship, 
but was even morbidly anti-social. He hated, with 
all his heart, every institution of man, and all his 
pretensions. He loathed his own relation to the human 
race. 

It was but on a few occasions that I ever met Mr. 
Hazlitt myself; and those occasions, or all but one, 
were some time subsequent to the case of female 
treachery which I have here described. Twice, I 
think, or it might be three times, we walked for a 
few miles together : it was in London, late at night, 
and after leaving a party. Though depressed by the 
spectivcle of a mind always in agitation from the 
gloomier passions, I was yet amused by the perti- 
nacity with which he clung, through bad reasons :i 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 235 

no reasons, to any public slander floating against men 
in power, or in the highest rank. No feather, or dowl 
of a feather, but was heavy enough for him. Amongst 
other instances of this willingness to be deluded by 
rumors, if they took a direction favorable to his own 
bias, Hazlitt had adopted the whole strenglh of popu- 
lar hatred which for many years ran violently against 
the King of Hanover, at that time Duke of Cumber- 
land. A dark calumny had arisen against this prince, 
amongst the populace of London, as though he had 
been accessary to the death of his valet. This valet 
[Sellis] had, in fact, attempted to murder the prince ; 
and all that can be said in palliation of his act, is, 
that he believed himself to have sustained, in the 
person of his beautiful wife, the heaviest dishonor 
incident to man. How that matter stood, I pretend not 
to know : the attempt at murder was baffled ; and 
the valet then destroyed himself with a razor. All 
this had been regularly sifted by a coroner's inquest ; 
and I remarked to Hazlitt, that the witnesses seemed 
to have been called, indifferently, from all quarters 
likely to have known the facts ; so that, if this inquest 
had failed to elicit the truth, we might, with equal 
reason, presume as much of all other inquests. From 
the verdict of a jury, except in very peculiar cases, 
no candid and temperate man will allow himself to 
believe any appeal sustainable ; for, having the wit- 
nesses before them face to face, and hearing the whole 
of the evidence, a jury have always some means of 
forming a judgment which cannot be open to him who 
depends upon an abridged report. But, on this sub- 
ject, Hazlitt would hear no reason. He said — "No, 



236 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

all the princely houses of Europe have the instinct 
of murder running in their blood; — they cherish it 
through their privilege of making war, which being 
wholesale murder, once having reconciled themselves 
to that, they think of retail murder, committed on 
you or me, as of no crime at all." Under this obsti- 
nate prejudice against the duke, Hazlitt read every- 
thing that he did, or did not do, in a perverse spirit. 
And, in one of these nightly walks, he mentioned to 
me, as something quite worthy of a murderer, tnt, 
following little trait of casuistry in the royal duke's 
distribution of courtesies. " I saw it myself," said 
Hazlitt, " so no coroner's jury can put me down." His 
royal highness had rooms in St. James' ; and, one 
day, as he was issuing from the palace into Pail-Mall, 
Hazlitt happened to be immediately behind him; he 
could therefore watch his motions along the whole 
line of his progress. It is the custom in England, 
wheresoever the persons of the royal family are fa- 
miliar to the public eye, as at Windsor, &c., that all 
passengers in the streets, on seeing them, walk bare- 
headed, or make some signal of dutiful respect. On 
this occasion, all the men, who met the prince, took 
off their hats ; the prince acknowledging every such 
obeisance by a separate bow. Pali-Mall being fin- 
^ ished, and its whole harvest of royal salutations gath- 
ered in, next the duke came to Cockspur street. But 
here, and taking a station close to the crossing, which 
daily he beautified and polished with his broom, stood 
a Negro sweep. If human at all, which some people 
doubted, he was pretty nearly as abject a representa- 
tive of our human family divine as can ever have 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 237 

existed. Still he was held to be a man by the law of 
the land, which would have hanged any person, gentle 
or simple, for cutting his throat. Law (it is certain), 
conceived him to be a man, however poor a one ; 
though Medicine, in an under-tone, muttered, some- 
times, a demur to that opinion. But here the sweep 
icas, whether man or beast, standing humbly in the 
paih of royaltj'' ; vanish he would not ; he was (as 
The Thnes says of the Corn-League) " a great fact," 
if rather a muddy one; and though, by his own con- 
fession (repeated one thousand times a day), both 
"a nigger" and a sweep [=' Remember poor nigger, 
your honor ! " " remember poor sweep! "], yet the crea- 
ture could take off his rag of a hat, and earn the bow 
of a prince, as well as any white native of St. James'. 
What was to be done ? A great case of conscience 
was on the point of being raised in the person of a 
paralytic nigger; nay, possibly a state question — 
Ought a son of England,^ could a son of England, 

* " Son of England ; " that is, prince of the blood in the rfireci, 
and not in the collateral, line. I mention this for the sake of 
Bonie readers, ■who may not be aware that this beautiful form- 
ula, so well known in France, is often transferred by the 
French writers of memoirs to our English princes, though little 
used amongst ourselves. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, brother of 
Louis XIV., was " a sow of France," as being a child of Louis 
Xin. But the son of Gaston, namely, the Regent Duke of 
Orleans, was a grandson of France. The first wife of Gaston, 
our Princess Henrietta, was called " Fille d'Angleterre," as 
being a daughter of Charles I. The Princess Charlotte, again., 
was a daughter of England ; her present majesty, a grand- 
daughter of England. But all these ladies collectively would be 
called, on the French principle, the children of England. 



2'SS WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

descend from his majestic pedestal to g'ild with the 
rays of his condescension such a grub, juch a very 
doubtful grub, as this ? Total Pall-Mall was sagacious 
of the coming crisis ; judgment was going to be deliv- 
ered ; a precedent to be raised ; and Pail-Mall stood 
still, with Hazlitt at its head, to learn the issue. How 
if the black should be a Jacobin, and (in the event of 
the duke's bowing) should have a bas-relief sculptured 
on his tomb, exhibiting an English prince, and a Ger- 
man king, as two separate personages, in the act of 
worshipping his broom ? Luckily, it was not the 
black's province to settle the case. The Duke of 
Cumberland, seeing no counsel at hand to argue either 
the pro or the contra, found himself obliged to settle 
the question de piano ; so, drawing out his purse, he 
kept his hat as rigidly settled on his head as William 
Penn and Mead did before the Eecorder of London. 
All Pall-Mall applauded : contradicente Gulielmo Haz- 
litt, and Hazlitt only. The black swore that the 
prince gave him half-a-crown ; but whether he re- 
garded this in the light of a god-send to his avarice 
or a shipwreck to his ambition — whether he was more 
thankful for the money gained, or angry for the honor 
lost — did not transpire. "No matter," *feaid Hazlitt, 
" the black might be a fool ; but I insist upon it, that 
he was entitled to the bow, since all Pall-Mall had it 
before him ; and tliat it was unprincely to refuse it." 
Either as a black or as a scavenger, Hazlitt held him 
•' qualified " for sustaining a royal bow : as a black, 
was he not a specimen (if rather a damaged one) of 
the homo sapiens described by Linnaeus ? As a sweep, 
in possession (by whatever title) of a lucrative cross- 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 239 

ing-, had liG not a kind of estate in London? Was he 
not, said Hazlitt, a fellow-subject, capable of com- 
mittmgf treason, and paying taxes into the treasury ? 
Not perhaps in any direct shape, but indirect taxes 
most certainly on his tobacco — and even on his 
broom. 

These things could not be denied. But still, when 
my turn came for speaking, I confessed frankly that 
(politics apart) my feeling in the case went along with 
the duke's. The bow would not be so useful to the 
black as the half-crown : he could not possibly have 
both ; for how could any man make a bow to a beggar 
when in the act of giving him half-a-crown ? Then, 
on the other hand, this bow, so useless to the sweep, 
and (to speak by a vulgar adage) as superfluous as a 
side-pocket to a cow, would react upon the other bows 
distributed along the line of Pall-Mail, so as to neutral- 
ize them one and all. No honor could continue such 
in which a paralytic negro sweep was associated. This 
distinction, however, occurred to me ; that if, instead 
of a prince and a subject, the royal dispenser of bows 
had been a king, he ought not to have excluded the 
black from participation ; because, as the common 
father of his people, he ought not to know of any dif- 
ference amongst those who are equally his children. 
And in illustration of that opinion, I sketched a little 
scene which I had myself witnessed, and with great 
pleasure, upon occasion of a visit made to Drury Lane 
by George IV. when regent. At another time I may 
tell it to the reader. Hazlitt, however, listened fret- 
fully to me when praising the deportment and beautiful 
gestures of one conservative leader ; though he had 



2-iO WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

compelled me to hear the most disadvantageous com- 
ments on another. 

As a lecturer, I do not know what Hazlitt was, hav- 
ing never had an opportunity of hearing him. Some 
qualities in his style of composition were calculated to 
assist the purposes of a lecturer, who must produce au 
effect oftentimes by independent sentences and para- 
graphs, who must glitter and surprise, who must turn 
round within the narrowest compass, and cannot rely 
upon any sort of attention that would cost an efforL 
Mr. Gilfillan says, that " He proved more popular than 
was expected by those who knew his uncompromising 
scorn of all those tricks and petty artifices which are 
frequently employed to pump up applause. His man- 
ner was somewhat abrupt and monotonous, but earnest 
and energetic." At the same time, Mr. Gilfillan takes 
an occasion to express some opinions, which appear 
very just, upon the unfitness (generally speaking) of 
men whom he describes as "fiercely inspired," for this 
mode of display. The truth is, that all genius implies 
originality, and sometimes uncontrollable singularity, 
in the habits of thinking, and in the modes of viewing 
as well as of estimating objects. Whereas a miscella- 
neous audience is best conciliated by that sort of talent 
which reflects the average mind, which is not over- 
weighted in any one direction, is not tempted into any 
extreme, and is able to preserve a steady, rope-dancer's 
equilibrium of posture upon themes where a man of 
genius is most apt to lose it. 

It would be interesting to have a full and accurate 
list of Hazlitt's works, including, of course, his con- 
tributions to journals and encyclopeedias. These last, 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 241 

as shorter, and oftener springing from an impromptu 
efTort, are more likely, than his regular books, to have 
been written with a pleasurable enthusiasm ; and the 
writer's proportion of pleasure, in such cases, very 
often becomes the regulating law for his reader's. 
Amongst the philosophical works of Hazlitt, I do not 
obser/e that Mr. Gilfillan is aware of two that are 
likely to be specially interesting. One is an examina- 
tion of David Hartley, at least as to his law of associa- 
tion. Thirty years ago, I looked into it slightly ; but 
my reverence for Hartley offended me with its tone ; 
and afterwards, hearing that Coleridge challenged for 
his own most of what was important in the thoughts, I 
lost all interest in the essay. Hazlitt, having heard 
Coleridge talk on this theme, must have approached it 
with a mind largely preoccupied as regarded the weak 
points in Hartley, and the particular tactics for assail- 
ing them. But still the great talents for speculative 
research which Hazlitt had from nature, without having 
given to them the benefit of much culture or much 
exercise, would justify our attentive examination of the 
work. It forms part of the volume which contains the 
" Essay on Human Action ; " which volume, by the 
way, Mr. Gilfillan supposes to have won the special 
applause of Sir James Mackintosh, then in Bengal. 
This, if accurately stated, is creditable to Sir James' 
generosity ; for in this particular volume it is that 
Hazlitt makes a pointed assault, in sneering terms, and 
very unnecessarily, upon Sir .Tames. 

The other little work unnoticed by Mr. Gilfillan, is 
an examination (but under what title I cannot say) of 
Lindley Murray's English Grammar. This may seem. 



242 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

by its subject, a trifle ; yet Hazlitt could hardly have 
had a motive t'or such an effort but in some philosophic 
perception of the ignorance betrayed by many gram- 
mars of our language, and sometimes by that of 
Lindley Murray; which Lindley, by the way, though 
resident in England, was an American. There is great 
room for a useful display of philosophic subtlety in an 
English grammar, even though meant for schools. 
Hazlitt could not but have furnished something of 
value towards such a display. And if (as I was once 
told) his book was suppressed, I imagine that this sup- 
pression must have been purchased by some powerful 
publisher interested in keeping up the current reputa- 
tion of Murray. 

" Strange stories," says Mr. Gilfillan, " are told about 
his [Hazlitt's] latter days, and his death-bed." I know 
not whether I properly understand Mr. Gilfillan. The 
stories which I myself have happened to hear, were 
not so much " strange," since they arose, naturally 
enough, out of pecuniary embarrassments, as they 
were afflicting in the turn they took. Dramatically 
viewed, if a man were speaking of things so far re- 
moved from our own times and interests as to excuse 
that sort of language, the circumstances of Hazlitt's 
last hours might rivet the gaze of a critic as fitted, 
harmoniously, with almost scenic art, to the whole 
tenor of his life ; fitted equally to rouse his wrath, to 
deepen his dejection, and in the hour of death to justify 
his misanthropy. But I have no wish to utter a word 
on things which I know only at second-hand, and can- 
not speak upon without risk of misstating facts oi 



WILLIAM IIAZLITT. 243 

Ao'ms; injustice to persons. I prefer closing this section 
with the words of Mr. Gilfillan : 

"Well says Buhver, that of all the mental wrecks 
which have occurred in our era, this was the most mel- 
ancholy. Others may have been as unhappy in their 
domestic circumstances, and gone down steeper places 
of dissipation than he ; but they had meanwhile the 
breath of popularity, if not of wealth and station, to 
give them a certain solace." What had Hazlitt of this 
nature ? Mr. (xilfillan answers, — " Absolutely nothing 
to support and cheer him. With no hope, no fortune, 
no status in society ; no certain popularity as a writer, 
no domestic peace, little sympathy from kindred spirits, 
little support from his political party, no moral man- 
agement, no definite belief; with great powers, and 
great passions within, and with a host of powerful 
enemies without, it was his to enact one of the saddest 
tragedies on which the sun ever shone. Such is a 
faithful portraiture of an extraordinary man, whose 
restless intellect and stormy passions have now, for 
fifteen years, found that repose in the grave which was 
denied them above it." Mr. Gilfillan concludes with 
expressing his conviction, in which I desire to concur, 
that both enemies and friends will now join in admira- 
tion for the man; "both will readily concede 7iow, that 
a subtle thinker, an eloquent writer, a lover of beauty 
and poetry, and man and truth, one of the best of 
critics, and not the worst of men, expired in William 
Hazlitt." Requiescat in pace . 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR* 



JNoBODY in this generation reads The Spectator. 
There are, however, several people still surviving 
who have read No. 1 ; in which No. 1 a strange mis- 
take is made. It is there asserted, as a general 
affection of human nature, that it is impossible to 
read a book with satisfaction until one has ascertained 
whether the author of it be tall or short, corpulent or 
thin, and, as to complexion, whether he be a " black '' 
man (which, in the Spectator'' s time, was the absurd 
expression for a swarthy man), or a fair 'man, or a 
sallow man, or perhaps a green man, which Southey 
affirmed ^ to be the proper description of many stout 
artificers in Birmingham, too much given to work in 
metallic fumes ; on which account the name of Southey 
IS an abomination to this day in certain furnaces of 
Warwickshire. But can anything be more untrue than 
this Spectatorial doctrine ? Did ever the youngest of 
female novel readers, on a" sultry day, decline to eat a 
bunch of grapes until she knew whether the fruiterer 
were a good-looking man ? Which of us ever heard 
B stranger inquiring for a "Guide to the Trosachs," 

* The Works of Walter Savage Landor. 2 vols. 

(244) 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 245 

but saying-, "I scruple, however, to pay for this boolc, 
until I know whether the author is heather-legged." 
On tliis principle, it" any such principle prevailed, we 
authors should be liable to as strict a revision of our 
physics before having any right to be read, as we all 
are before having our lives insured from the medical 
advisers of insurance offices ; fellows that examine one 
with stethoscopes ; that pinch one, that actually punch 
one in the ribs, until a man becomes savage, and — in 
case the insurance should miss fire in consequence of 
the medical report — speculates on the propriety of 
prosecuting the medical ruffian for an assault, for a 
iTiost unprovoked assault and battery, and, if possible, 
including in the indictment the now odious insurance 
office as an accomplice before the fact. Meantime 
the odd thing is, not that Addison should have made 
a mistake, but that he and his readers should, in this 
mistake, have recognized a hidden truth, — the sudden 
illumination of a propensity latent in all people, but 
now first exposed ; for it happens that there really is a 
propensity in all of us, very like what Addison de- 
scribes very difTerent, and yet, after one correction 
the very same. No reader cares about an author's 
persoi'. before reading his book ; it is after reading it, 
and supposing the book to reveal something of the 
writer's morral nature, as modifying his intellect ; it is 
foi his fun, his fancy, his sadness, possibly his crazi- 
ness, that any reader cares about seeing the author in 
person. Afflicted with the very satyriasis of curiosity 
no man ever wished to see the author of a Ready 
Brckoner, or of a treatise on the Agistment Tithe 
01 on ^he P;^se?it dcnhralle Dry-rot in Potatoes. 



246 jsroTEs on walter savage landor. 

" Bund.e off, sir, as fast as you can," the most diligent 
leader would say to such an author, in case he insisted 
on submitting his charms to inspection. "I have had 
quite enough distress of mind from reading your 
works, without needing the additional dry-rot of your 
bodily presence." Neither does any man, on descend- 
ing from a railway train, turn to look Avhether the 
carriage in which he has ridden happens to be a good- 
looking carriage, or wish for an introduction to the 
coach-maker. 'Satisfied that the one has not broken 
his bones, and that the other has no writ against his 
person, he dismisses with the same frigid scowl both the 
carriage and the author of its existence. 

But, with respect to Mr. Landor, as at all connected 
with this reformed doctrine of the Spectator, a diffi- 
culty arises. He is a man of great genius, and, as 
such, he ought to interest the public. More than enough 
appears of his strong, eccentric nature, through every 
page of his now extensive writings, to win, amongst 
those who have read him, a corresponding interest in 
all that concerns him personally ; in his social rela- 
tions, in his biography, in his manners, in his appear- 
ance. Out of two conditions for attracting a periional 
- interest, he has powerfully realized one. His moral 
nature, shining with colored light through the crystal 
shrine of his thoughts, will not allow of your forgetting 
it. A sunset of Claude, or a dying dolphin can be 
forgotten, and generally is forgotten ; but not the fiery 
radiations of a human spirit built by nature to animate 
a leader in storms, a martyr, a national reformer, an 
arch-rebel, as circumstances might dictate, but whom 
too much wealth, 2 anc the accidents of education, have 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. S-IT 

turned aside into a contemplative reclase. Had Mr. 
Landor, therefore, been read in any extent answering 
to his merits, he must have become, for the English 
public, an object of prodigious personal interest. We 
should have had novels upon him, lampoons upon him, 
libels upon him ; he would have been shown up dra- 
matically on the stage ; he would, according to the old 
joke, have been " traduced " in French, and also " over- 
set " in Dutch. Meantime he has not been. read. It 
would be an affectation to think it. Many a writer is, 
by the sycophancy of literature, reputed to be read, 
whom in all Europe not six eyes settle upon through 
the revolving year. Literature, with its cowardly false- 
hoods, exhibits the largest field of conscious Phrygian, 
adulation that human life has ever exposed to the de- 
rision of the heavens. Demosthenes, for instance, or 
Plato, is not read to the extent of twenty pages annu- 
ally by ten people in Europe. The sale of their works 
would not account for three readers ; the other six or 
seven are generally conceded as possibilities furnished 
by the great public libraries. But, then, Walter Savage 
Landor, though writing a little in Latin, and a very 
little in Italian, does not write at all in Greek. So far 
he has some advantage over Plato ; and, if he writes 
chiefly in dialogue, which few^ people love to read any 
more than novels in the shape of letters, that is a crime 

common to both. So that he has the d I's luck 

and his own, all Plato's chances, and one of his own 
beside — namely, his English. Still, it is no use count- 
ing chances ; facts are the thing. And printing-presses, 
whether of Europe or of England, bear witness that 
neither Plato nor Landor is a marketable commodity. 



248 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

In fact, these two men resemble each other in more 
particulars than it is at present necessary to say. 
Especially they were both inclined to be luxurious ; 
both had a hankering after purple and fine linen ; 
both hated " filthy dowlas " with the hatred of FalstafF, 
whether in apparelling themselves or their diction ; and 
both bestowed pains as elaborate upon the secret art 
of a dialogue, as a lapidary would upon *he cutting of a 
sultan's tubies. 

But might not a man build a reputation on the basis 
of not being read ? To be read is undoubtedly some- 
thing : to be read by an odd million or so, is a sort of 
feather in a man's cap ; but it is also a distinction that 
he has been read absolutely by nobody at all. There 
have been cases, and one or two in modern times, 
where an author could point to a vas-t array of his own 
works, concerning which no evidence existed that so 
much as one had been opened by human hand, o\ 
glanced at- by human eye. That was awful ; such a 
sleep of pages by thousands in one eternal darkness, 
never to be visited by light ; such a rare immunity 
from the villanies of misconstruction ; such a Sabbath 
from the impertinencies of critics ! You shuddered 
to reflect that, for anything known to the contrary, 
there m:ght lurk jewels of truth explored in vain, or 
treasure forever intercepted to the interests of man. 
But such a sublimity supposes total defect of readers ; 
whereas it can be proved against Mr. Landor, thai he 
has been read by at least a score of people, all wide 
awake; and if any treason is buried in a page cf his, 
thank Heaven, by this time it must have been found 
out and reported to the authorities. So that neither 



NOTES JN WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 249 

tan Laiulor plead the unlimited popularity of a novel- 
ist, aided by the interest of a tale, and by an artist, 
nor the total obscuration of a German metaphysician. 
Neither do mobs read him, as they do M. Sue ; nor da 
all men turn away their eyes from him, as they do from 
Hegel. -^ 

This, however, is true only of Mr. Landor's prose 
works. His first work was a poem, namely, Gebir and 
it had the sublime distinction, for some time, of having 
enjoyed only two readers ; which two were Southey 
and myself. It was on first entering at Oxford that I 
found " Gebir " printed and (nominally) published ; 
whereas, in fact, all its advertisements of birth and 
continued existence were but so many notifications of 
its intense privacy. Not knowing Southey at that 
time, I vainly conceited myself to be the one sole pur- 
chaser and reader of this poem. I even fancied 
myself to have been pointed out in the streets of 
Oxford, where the Landors had been well know^n in 
times preceding my own, as the one inexplicable man 
authentically known to possess "Gebir," or even (it 
might be whispered mysteriously) to have read " Ge- 
bir." It was not clear but this reputation might stand 
in lieu of any independent fame, and might raise 
me to literary distinction. The preceding generation 
had greatly esteemed the man called " Single-Speech 
IIamilto?i;" not at all for the speech (which, thougi 
good, very few people had read), but entirely for the 
supposed {-Act that he had exhausted himself in that 
one speech, and had become physically incapable of 
making a second ; so that afterwards, when he really 
did make a second, everybody was incredulous; urtil, 

J1# 



250 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

the thing being past denial, naturally the world waa 
disgusted, and most people dropped his acquaintance. 
To be a Mono-Gebirist was quite as good a title to 
notoriety ; and five years after, when I found that I 
had " a brother near the throne," namely, Southey, 
mortification would have led me willingly to resign alto- 
gether in his favor. Shall I make the reader acquainted 
with the story of Gebir ? 

Gebir is the king of Gibraltar ; which, however, it 
would be an anachronism to call Gibraltar, since it 
drew that name from this very Gebir; and doubtless, 
by way of honor to his memory. Mussulmans tell a 
difTerent story ; but who cares for what is said by 
infidel dogs ? King, then, let us call him of Calpe ; 
and a very good king he is ; young, brave, of upright 
intentions; but being also warlike,, and inflamed by 
popular remembrances of ancient wrongs, he resolves 
to seek reparation from the children's children of the 
wrong-doers ; and he weighs anchor in search of Mr. 
Pitt's " indemnity for the past," though not much re- 
garding that right honorable gentleman's " security for 
the future." Egypt was the land that sheltered the 
wretches that represented the ancestors that had done 
the wrong. To Egypt, therefore, does king Gebir steer 
his expedition, which counted ten thousand picked 
men : 



"Incenst 



By meditating on primeval wrongs. 

He blew his battle-horn ; at which uprose 

"Whole nations : here ten thousand of most might 

He called aloud ; and soon Charoba saw 

His dark helm hover o'er the land of Nile." 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 251 

Who is Charoba ? As respects the reader, she is the 
heroine of the poem ; as respects Egypt, she is queen 
bjf^ the grace of God, defender of the foith, and so 
forth. Young and accustomed to unlimited obedience, 
how could she be otherwise than alarmed by the 
descent of a hoht far more martial than her own effem- 
inate people, and assuming a religious character — 
avengers of wrong in some forgotten age ? In her 
trepidation, she turns for aid and counsel to her nurse 
Dalica. Dalica, by the way, considered as a word, is 
a dactyle , that is, you must not lay the accent on the 
i, but on the first syllable. Dalica, considered as a 
woman, is about as bad a one as even Egj^pt could 
furnish. She is a thorough gypsy ; a fortune-teller, 
and soinething worse, in fact. She is a sorceress, 
"stiff in opinion ; " and it needs not Pope's authority to 

infer that of course she " is always in the wrong." 

By her advice, but for a purpose known best to herself, 
an interview is arranged between Charoba and the 
invading monarch. At this interview, the two youth 
ful sovereigns, Charoba the queen of hearts and Gebir 
the king of clubs, fall irrevocably in love with each 
other. There 's an end of club law ; and Gebir is ever 
afterwards disarmed. But Dalica, that wicked Dalica, 
that sad old dactyle, who sees everything clearly that 
happens to be twenty years distant, cannot see a pike- 
staff if it is close before her nose ; and of course she 
mistakes Charoba's agitations of love for paroxysms of 
anger. Charoba is herself partly to blame for this ; 
but you must excuse her. The poor child readily 
confided her terrors to Dalica ; but how can she be 
expected to make a love confidante of a tawny old 



252 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOE. 

Witch li Ice her? Upon this mistake, however, proceeds 
the whole remaining plot. Dr. Dalica (which means 
doctor D., and by no means dear D.), having totally 
mistaken the symptoms, the diagnosis, the prognosis, 
and everything that ends in osis, necessarily mistakes 
also the treatment of the case, and, like some other 
doctors, failing to make a cure, covers up her blunders 
by a general slaughter. She visits her sister, a sorceress 
more potent than herself, living 

" Deep in the wilderness of woe, Masar." 

Between them they concert heftish incantations. From 
these issues a venomous robe, like that of the centaui 
Nessus. This, at a festal meeting between the two 
nations and their princes, is given by Charoba to hei 
lover — her lover, but as yet not recognized as such by 
her, nor, until the moment of his death, avowed as 
such by himself. Gebir dies — the accursed robe, dipped 
in the " viscous poison * exuding from the gums of the 
gray cerastes, and tempered by other venomous juices 
of plant and animal, proves too much for his rocky 
constitution — Gibraltar is found not impregnable — 
the blunders of Dalica, the wicked nurse, and the arts 
of her sister Myrthyr, the wicked witch, are found too 
potent; and in one moment the union of two nations, 
with the happiness of two sovereigns, is wrecked for- 
ever. The closing situation of the parties — monarch 
and monarch, nation and nation, youthful king and 
youthful queen, dying or despairing — nation and 
nation that had been reconciled, starting asunder once 
again amidst festival and flowers — these objects are 
■^cenically effective. The conception of the grouping 



IS 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 253 

good- the wise en scene is good; but, from want of 
parns-taldng, uot sufficiently brought out into strong 
relief; and the dying words of Gebir, which wind up 
the whole, are too bookish ; they seem to be part of 
some article which he had been writing for the Gibraltar 
Quarterly. 

There are two episodes, composing jointly about two- 
sevenths of the poem, and by no means its weakest 
parts. One describes the descent of Gebir to Hades. 
His guide is a man — who is this man ? 

" Living — they called him Aroar." 

Ishe ??oMiving, then? No. Is he dead, then ? No, 

nor dead either. Poor Aroar cannot live, and cannot 

die — so that he is in an almighty fix. In this dis- 

agreeable dilemma, he contrives to amuse himself 

with poiitics— and, rather of a Jacobinical cast: like 

the Virgilian jEneas, Gebir is introduced not to the 

shades of the past only, but of the future. He sees 

the preexisting ghosts of gentlemen who are yet to 

come, silent as ghosts ought to be, but destined at some 

far distant time to make a considerable noise in our 

upper world. Amongst these is our worthy old George 

III., who (strange to say !J is not foreseen as galloping 

from Windsor to Kew, surrounded by an escort of 

"dragoons, nor in a scarlet coat riding after a fox, nor 

taking his morning rounds amongst his sheep and his 

turnips; but in the likeness of some savage creature. 

whom really, were it not for his eyebrows and hia 

^'slanting'' forehead, the reader would never recog 

nize : 



254 NOTES ON^ WALTF.R SAVAGE LANDOR. 

" Aroar ! what wretch that nearest U!^ ' what wretch 
Is that, with eyebrows white and slanting brow ? 

king : 

Iberia bore him ; but tlie breed accurst 
Inclement winds blew blighting from north-east." 

Iberia is spiritual Enc-land ; and north-east is mystica, 
Hanover. But what, then, were the "wretch's" crimes? 
The white eyebrows I confess to ; those were certainly 
crimes of considerable magnitude : but what else ? 
Gebir has the same curiosity as myself, and propounds 
something- like the same fishing question : 

" He was a warrior then, nor feared the gods ? " 

To which Aroar answers — 

" Gebir ! he feared the demons, not the gods ; 
Though them, indeed, his daily face adored. 
And was no warrior ; yet the thousand lives 
Squandered as if to exercise a sling, &c. &c." 

Really Aroar is too Tom-Painish, and seems up (o a 
little treason. He makes the poor king answeraole 
for more than his own share of national offences, if 
such they were. All of us in the last generation were 
rather fond of fighting and assisting at fights in the 
character of mere spectators. I am sure I was. But 
if that is any fault, so was Plato, who (though probably 
inferior as a philosopher to you and me, reader) was 
much superior to either of us as a cock-fighter. So 
was Socrates in the preceding age ; for, as he notori- 
ouily haunted the company of Alcibiades at all hours, 
he must often have found his pupil diverting himself 
with these fighting quails which he kept in such 
numbers. Be assured that the oracle's " wisest of 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGfi LANDOR. 255 

men " lent a liand very cheerfully to putting on the 
spurs when a main was to be fought; and; as to bet- 
ting, probably that was the reason that Xannppe was 
so often down upon him when he went home at night. 
To come home reeling from a fight, without a drachma 
left in his pocket, would naturally provoke any woman. 
Posterity has been very much misinformed about these 
things; and, no doubt, about Xantippe, poor woman, 
in particular. If she had had a disciple to write books, 
as her cock-fighting husband had, perhaps we should 
have read a very different story. By the way, the 
propensity to scandalum magnatum in Aroar was one 
of the things that fixed my youthful attention, and 
perhaps my admiration, upon Gebir. For myself, as 
perhaps the reader may have heard, I was and am a 
Tory ; and in some remote geological era, my bones 
may be dug up by some future Buckland as a specimen 
of the fossil Tory. Yet, for all that, I loved audacity ; 
and I gazed with some indefinite shade of approbation 
upon a poet whom the attorney-general might have 
occasion to speak with. 

This, however, was a mere condiment to the mam 
attraction of the poem. That lay in the picturesque- 
ness of the' images, attitudes, groups, dispersed every- 
where. The eye seemed to rest everywhere upon 
festal processions, upon the panels of Theban gates, 
or upon sculptured vases. The very first lines that by 
accident met my eye were tho~e which follow. I cite 
them in mere obedience to the fact as it really was ; 
else there are more striking illustrations of this sculp- 
turesque faculty in Mr, Landor ; and for this faculty 
it was that both Southey and myself separately and 



256 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

independently had named him the English Valerius 
Flaccus, 

GEBIR ON REPAIRING TO HIS FIRST INTERVIEW WITH 
CHAROBA. 

" But Gebir, when he heard of her approach, 
Laid by his orbed shield : his vizor helm, 
His buckler and his corslet he laid' by. 
And bade that none attend him : at his side 
Two faithful dogs that urge the silent course, 
Shaggy, deep-chested, croucht ; the crocodile. 
Crying, oft made them raise their flaccid ears. 
And push their heads within their master's hand. 
There was a lightning paleness in his face, 
Such as Diana rising over the rocks 
Sliowered on the lonely Latmian ; on his brow 
Sorrow there was, but there was naught severe." 

" And the long moonbeam on the hard wet sand 
Lay like a jasper column half up-reared." 

•' The king, who sate before his tent, descried 
The dust rise reddened from the setting su7i." 

Now let us pass to the imaginary dialogues : — 
Marshal Bitgeaud and Arab Chieftain. — This dia- 
logue, which is amongst the shortest, would not chal- 
lenge a separate notice, were it not for the freshness 
in the public mind, and the yet uncicatrized raw- 
ness of that atrocity which it commemorates. Here 
is an official account from the commander-in-chief: — 
"Of seven hundred refractory and rebellious, who 
took refuge in the caverns, thirty" [says the 
glory-hunting Marshal], "and thirty only, are alive; 
and of these thirty there are four only who are 
capable of labor, or indeed of motion," How precious 
to the Marshal's heart must be that harvest of misery* 



KOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 237 

from wliich he so reluctantly allows the discount of 
about one-half per cent ! Four only out of seven hun- 
dred, he is happy to assure Christendom, remain capa- 
ble of hopping about ; as to working, or getting honest 
bread, or doing any service in this world to themselves 
or others, it is truly delightful to announce, for public 
information, that all such practices are put a stop to for- 
ever. 

Amongst the fortunate four, who retain the power 
of hopping, we must reckon the Arab Chieftain, who 
is introduced into the colloquy in the character of 
respondent. He can hop, of course, ex hypothest, 
being one of the ever-lucky quaternion ; he can hop a 
little also as a rhetorician ; indeed, as to that, he is too 
i.iuch for the Marshal ; but on the other hand he can- 
not see ; the cave has cured him of any such imperti- 
nence as staring into other people's faces ; he is also 
lame, the cave has shown him the absurdity of ram- 
bling about; — and, finally, he is a beggar; or, if he 
will not allow himself to be called by that name, upon 
the argument [which seems plausible] that he cannot 
be a beggar if he never begs, it is not the less certain 
that, in case of betting a sixpence, the chieftain would 
find it inconvenient to stake the cash. 

The Marshal, who apparently does not pique him- 
self upon politeness, adresses the Arab by the follow- 
ing assortment of names — "Thief, assassm, tra tor ; 
blind graybeard ! lame beggar ! " The three first 
titles being probably mistaken for compliments, the 
Arab pockets in silence ; but to the double-barrelled 
discharges of the two last he replies thus: — "Cease 
there Thou canst never make me beg for bread, for 
17 



25S NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

water, or for life ; my gray beard is from God ; my 
blindness and lameness are from thee." This is a 
pleasant way of doing business ; rarely does one find 
little accounts so expeditiously settled and receipted. 
Beggar ? But how if I do not beg ? Graybeard ? 
Put that down to the account of God. Cripple ? Put 
that down to your own. Getting sulky under this 
mode of fencing from the desert-born, the Marshal 
invites him to enter one of his new-made law courts, 
where he will hear of something probably not to his 
advantage. Our Arab friend, however, is no con- 
noisseur m courts of law: small wale* of courts ia 
the desert ; he does not so much " do himself the honor 
to decline" as he turns a deaf ear to this proposal, and 
on his part presents a little counter invitation to the 
Marshal for a pic-nic party to the caves of Dahra. 
"Enter" (says the unspai'ing Sheik), "and sing and 
whistle in the cavern where the bones of brave men 
are never to bleach, are never to decay. Go, where 
the mother and infant are inseparable forever — one 
mass of charcoal ; the breasts that gave life, the lips 
that received it — all, all, save only where two arms, 
in color and hardness like corroded iron, cling round 
a brittle stem, shrunken, warped, and where two heads 
are calcined. Even this massacre, no doubt, will find 
defenders in yojir country, for it is the custom of your 
country to cover blood with lies, and lies with blood." 
" And (says the facetious French Marshal) here and 
there a sprinkling of ashes over both." Arab. " End- 
ing in merriment, as befits ye. But is it ended ? " But 
is it ended? A.y; the wilderness beyond Algiers 
returns an echo to those ominous words of the blind 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 259 

and mutilated chieftain. No, brave Arab, although 
the Marshal scoflingly rejoins that at least it is ended 
for you, ended it is not; for the great quarrel by which 
human nature pleads with such a fiendish spirit of 
warfare, carried on under the countenance A him who 
stands first in authority under the nation that stands 
£&:ond in authority amongst the leaders of civiliza- 
tion; — quarrel of that sort, once arising, does not 
go to sleep again until it is righted forever. As the 
English martyr at Oxford said to his fellow-martyr — • 
'' Brother, be of good cheer, for we shall this day light 
up a fire in England that, by the blessing of God, can- 
not be extinguished forever," — even so the atrocities 
of these hybrid campaigns between baffled civil iza 
tion and barbarism, provoked into frenzy, will, lik,« 
the horrors of the middle passage rising up from tin 
Atlantic deep, suddenly, at the bar of the British 
senate, sooner or later reproduce themselves, in stronj 
reactions of the social mind throughout Christendom 
upon all the horrors of war that are wilful and super 
fl'ious. In that case there will be a consolation ir 
reserve for the compatriots of those, the bra\e men, 
the woiTien, and the innocent children, who died in that 
fiery furnace at Dahra. 

" Their moans 
The vales redoubled to the hills, and ihey 
To heaven." ^ 

The caves of Dahra repeated the woe to the hil' 
and the hills to God. But such a furnace, thoug 
fierce, mav be viewed as brief indeed if it shall ter 
ruinate in permanently pointing the wrath of nations 



260 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

(as in this dialogue it has pointed the wrath of genius) 
to the particular outrage and class of outrages whicli 
it concerns. The wrath of nations is a consuming 
wrath, and the scorn of intellect is a withering scorn, 
for all abuses upon which either one or the other is 
led, by strength of circumstances, to settle itself sys- 
tematically. The danger is for the most part that the 
very violence of public feeling should rock it asleep 
— the tempest exhausts itself by its own excesses — 
and the thunder of one or two immediate explosions, 
by satisfying the first clamors of human justice ^nd 
indignation, is too apt to intercept that sustained roll of 
artillery which is requisite for the effectual assault of 
long-established abuses. Luckily in the present case 
of the Dahra massacre there is the less danger of such 
a result, as the bloody scene has happened to fall 
in with a very awakened state of the public sensibility 
as to the evils of war generally, and with a state of 
expectation almost romantically excited as to the possi- 
bility of readily or soon exterminating these evils. 

Hope, meantime, even if unreasonable, becomes wise 
and holy when it points along a path of purposes 
that are more than usually beneficent. According to 
a fine illustration of Sir Phillip Sidney's, drawn from 
the practice of archery, by attempting- more than wp 
can possibly accomplish, we shall yet reach further 
than ever we should have reached with a less ambitious 
aim ; we shall do much for the purification of war, if 
nothing at all for its abolition ; and atrocities of this 
Algerinc. order are amongst the earliest that will give 
way. They will sink before the growing illumination, 
and (what is equally important) before the growing 



KOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE ULNDOR. 261 

combination of minds acting simultaneously from vari« 
ous centres, in nations otherwise the most at variance. 
By a rate of motion continually accelerated, the gath- 
ering power of the press, falling in with the growing 
facilities of personal intercourse, is, day hy day, bring- 
ing Europe more and more into a state of fusion, in 
which the sublime name of Christendom will contin- 
ually become more and more significant, and will 
express a unity of the most awful order, namely, in 
the midst of strife, long surviving as to inferior interests 
and subordinate opinions, will express an agreement 
continually more close, and an agreement continually 
more operative, upon all capital questions affecting 
human rights, duties, and the interests of human pro' 
gress. Before that tribunal, which every throb of 
every steam-engine, in printing houses and on railroads, 
is hurrying to establish, all flagrant abuses of bellige- 
rent powers will fall prostrate ; and, in particular, no 
form of pure undisguised murder will be any longer 
allowed to confound itself with the necessities of honor- 
able warfare. 

Much already has been accomplished on this path ; 
more than people are aware of; so gradual and silent 
has been the advance. How noiseless is the growth 
of corn ! Watch it night and day for a week, and you 
will never see it growing; but return after two months, 
and you will find it all whitening for the harvest. Such. 
and so imperceptible, in the stages of their motion, are 
the victories of the press. Here is one instance. Just 
forty-seven years ago, on the shores of Syria, was 
celebrated, by Napoleon Bonaparte, the most damnable 
carnival of murder that romance hal fabled, or tha; 



562 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

history has recorded. Rather more than four thousand 
meri — not (like Tyrolese or Spanish guerillas), even 
in pretence, " insurgent rustics," but regular troops, 
serving the Pacha and the Ottoman Sultan, not old men 
that might by odd fractions have been thankful for 
dismissal from a life of care or sorrow, but all young 
A.':. inians, in the early morning of manhood, the oldest 
not twenty-four — were exterminated by successive 
rolls of muskefi'y, when helpless as infants, having 
their arms pinioned behind their backs like felons on 
the scaffold, and having surrendered their muskets 
(which else would have made so desperate a resist- 
ance), on the faith that they were dealing with soldiers 
and men of honor. I have elsewhere examined, as a 
question in casuistry, the frivolous pretences for this 
infamous carnage, but that examination 1 have here no 
wish to repeat ; for it would draw off the attention 
from one feature of the case, which I desire to bring 
before the reader, as giving to this Jaffa tragedy a 
depth of atrocity wanting in that of Dahra. The four 
thousand and odd young Albanians had been seduced, 
trepanned, fraudulently decoyed, from a post of con- 
siderable strength, in which they could and would have 
so d their lives at a bloody rate, by a solemn promise 
of safety from -authorized French officers. *' But," 
said Napoleon, in part of excuse, " these men, my 
aides-de-camp, were poltroons ; to save their own lives, 
they made promises which they ought not to have 
made." Suppose it so ; and suppose the case one in 
whi^h the supreme authority has a right to disavow 
his agents ; what then ? This entitles that authority tc 
refuse ms ratification to the terms agreed on ; but this. 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 263 

at tlic same time, obliges him to replace the hostile 
parties in the advantages from which his agents had 
wiled them by these terms. A robber, who even owns 
himself such, will not pretend that he may refuse the 
price of the jewel as exorbitant, and yet keep pos- 
session of the jewel. And next comes a fraudulent 
advantage, not obtained by a knavery in the aid-de- 
camp, but in the leader himself. The surrender of the 
weapons, and the submission to the fettering of the 
arms, were not concessions from the Albanians, filched 
by the representatives of Napoleon, acting (as he 
says) without orders, but by express falsehoods, ema- 
nating from himself. The officer commanding at 
Dahra could not have reached his enemy without the 
shocking resource which he employed ; Napoleon 
could. The officer at Dahra violated no covenant ; 
Napoleon did. The officer at Dahra had not by lies 
seduced his victims from their natural advantages ; 
Napoleon had. Such was the atrocity of Jaffa in the 
year 1799. Now, the relation of that great carnage 
to the press, the secret argument through which that 
vast massacre connects itself with the progress of the 
press, is this — that in 1799, and the two following 
years, when most it had become important to search 
the character and acts of Napoleon, excepting Sir 
Robert Wilson, no writer in Europe, no section of the 
press, cared much to insist upon this, by so many 
degrees, (he worst deed of modern^ military life. 
From that deed all the waters of the Atlantic would 
not have cleansed him ; and yet, since 1804, we have 
heard much oftener of the sick men whom he poisoned 
in his Syrian hospital (an act of merely erroneous 



264 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

humanity), and more of the Due d'Enghien's execu- 
tion, than of either ; though this, savage as it was. 
admits of such palliations as belong to doubtful pro 
vocations in the sufferer, and to extreme personal terror 
in the inflicter. Here, then, we have a case of whole- 
sale military murder, emanating from Christendom, 
and not less treacherous than the worst which have 
been ascribed to the Mahometan Timur, or even to any 
Hindoo Rajah, which hardly moved a vibration of 
anger, or a solitary outcry of protestation from the 
European press (then, perhaps, having the excuse of 
deadly fear for herself), or even from the press of 
moral England, having no such excuse. Fifty years 
have passed ; a less enormity is perpetrated, but again 
by a French leader ; and, behold, Europe is now con- 
vulsed from side to side by unaffected indignation ! So 
travels the press to victory ; such is the light, and so 
broad, which it diffuses ; such is the strength for action 
by which it combines the hearts of nations. 

MELANCTHON AND CALVIN. 

Of Mr. Lander's notions in religion it would be use- 
less, and without polemic arguments it would be arro- 
gant, to say that they are false. It is sufficient to say 
that they are degrading. In the dialogue between 
Melancthon and Calvin, it is clear that the former rep- 
resents Mr. L. himself, and is not at all the Melancthon 
whom we may gather from his writings. Mr. Landor 
has heard that he was gentle and timid in action; and 
he exhibits him as a mere development of that key- 
note ; as a compromiser of all that is severe in dcc- 
trme ; and as on effeminate picker and chooser in 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 265 

morals. God, in his conception of him, is not a lather 
so much as a benign, but somewhat weak, old grand- 
father; and we, his grandchildren, being now and then 
rather naughty, are to be tickled with a rod made of 
feathers, but, upon the whule, may rely upon an eter- 
iiit}' of sugar-plums. For instance, take the puny idea 
ascribed to Melancthon upon Idolatry; and consider, 
for one moment, how little it corresponds to the vast 
machinery reared up by God himself against this 
secret poison and dreadful temptation of human na- 
ture. Melancthon cannot mean to question the truth 
or the importance of the Old Testament; and yet, if 
his view of idolatry (as reported by L.) be sound, the 
Bible must have been at the root of the worst mischief 
ever yet produced by idolatry. He begins by de- 
scribing idolatry as " Jeivish ; " insinuating that it was 
an irregularity chiefly besetting the Jews. But how 
perverse a fancy ! In the Jews, idolatry was a dis- 
ease ; in Pagan nations, it was the normal state. In a 
nation (if any such nation could exist) of cretiTis or of 
lepers, nobody would talk of cretinism or leprosy as 
of any morbid affection ; that would be the regular 
and natural condition of man. But where either was 
spoken of with horror as a ruinous taint in human flesh, 
it would argue that naturally (and, perhaps, by a large 
majority) the people were uninfected. Amongst Pa- 
gans, nobody talked of idolatry — no such idea existed 
— because that was the regular form of religious wor- 
ship. To be named at all, idolatry must be viewed as 
standmg in opposition to some higher worship that is 
TUit idolatry. But, next, as we are all agreed that in 
idolatry there is something evil, and differ only as to 



266 NOT£i ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

the propriety of considering it a Jewish evil, in what 
does this evil lie? It lies, according to the profound 
Landorian Melancthon, in this, that different idolaters 
figure the Deity under different forms; if they could 
all agree upon one and the same mode of figuring the 
invisible Being, there need be no quarrelling; and in 
this case, consequently, there would be no harm in 
iioUtry, none whatever. But, unhappily, it seems 
each nation, or sometimes section of a nation, has a 
different fancy ; they get to disputing ; and from that 
they get to boxing, in which, it is argued, lies the true 
evil of idolatry. It is an extra cause of broken heads. 
One tribe of men represent the Deity as a beautiful 
young man, with a lyre and a golden bow ; another as 
a snake; and a third — Egyptians, for instance, of 
old — as a beetle or an onion; these last, according to 
Juvenal's remark, having the happy privilege of grow- 
ing their own gods in their own kitchen-gardens. In 
all this there would be no harm, were it not for subse- 
quent polemics and polemical assaults. Such, if we 
listen to Mr. L., is Melancthon's profound theory "^ of 
a lalse idolatrous religion. Were the police every- 
where on an English footing, and the magistrates as 
unlike as possible to Turkish Cadis, nothing could be 
less objectionable ; but, as things are, the beetle- 
worshipper despises the onion-worshipper; which 
breeds ill blood ; whence grows a cudgel ; and from 
the cudgel a constable ; and from the constable an 
aiijust magistrate. Not so, Mr. Landor ; thus did not 
Melancthon speak ; and if he did, and would defend 
it for a thousand times, then for a thousand times he 
would deserve to be trampled by posterity into that 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 267 

rierman mire which he souirht to evade by his Grecian 
disguise.^ The true evil of idolatry is this : There is 
one sole idea of God, wliich corresponds adequately 
to his total nature. Of this idea, two things may be 
affirmed : the first being, that it is at the root of all 
absolute grandeur, of all truth, and of all moral per- 
fection ; the second being, that, natural and easy as 
it seems when once unfolded, it could only have been 
unfolded by revelation; and, to all eternity, he that 
started with a false conception of God, could not, 
through any efTort of his own, have exchanged it for a 
true one. iVll idolaters alike, though not all in equal 
degrees, by intercepting the idea of God through the 
prism of some representative creature tlwit partially 
resembles God, refract, splinter, and distort that idea. 
Even the idea of light, of the pure, solar light — the old 
Persian symbol of God — has that depraving neces- 
sity. Light itself, besides being an imperfect symbol, 
is an incarnation for us. However pure itself, or in 
its original divine manifestation, for us it is incarnated 
in forms and in matter that are not pure : it gravitates 
towards physical alliances, and therefore towards un- 
spiritual pollutions. And all experience shows that 
the tendency for man, left to his own imagination, is 
downwards. The purest symbol, derived from created 
things, can and will condescend to the grossness of 
inferior human natures, by submitting to mirror itself 
in more and more carnal representative symbols, until 
finally the mi.ved element of resemblance to God is 
altogether buried and lost. God, by this succession of 
imperfect interceptions, falls more and more under the 
taint and limitation of the alien elements associated 



26S NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

with all created things; and, for the ruin of all moral 
grandeur in man, every idolatrous nation left to itself 
will gradually bring' round the idea of God into the 
idea of a powerful demon. Many things check and 
disturb this tendency for a time ; but finally, and under 
that intense civilization to which man intellectually is 
always hurrying under the eternal evolution of physi- 
cal knowledge, such a degradation of God's idea, 
ruinous to the moral capacities of man, would un- 
doubtedly perfect itself, were it not for the kindling of 
a purer standard by revelation. Idolatry, therefore, is 
not merely a7i evil, and one utterly beyond the power 
of social institutions to redress, but, in fact, it is the 
fountain of all other evil that seriously menaces the 
destinv of the human race. 

PORSON AND SOUTHEY. 

The two dialogues between Southey and Porson 
relate to Wordsworth ; and they connect Mr. Landor 
with a body of groundless criticism, for which vainly 
he will seek to evade his responsibility by pleading the 
caution posted up at the head of his Conversations, 
namely, — " Avoid a mistake in attributing to i\\c writer 
any opinions in this book but what are spoken under 
his own name." If Porson, therefore, should happen 
to utter villanies that are indictable, that (you are to 
understand) is Porson's affliir. Render unto Landoi 
the eloquence of the dialogue, but render unto Porson 
any kicks which Porson may have merited by his 
atrocities against a man whom assuredly he never 
heard of, and probably never saw. Now, unless 
Wordsworth ran into Porson in the streets of Cam- 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 269 

orklge on some dark night about the era of the French. 
Revolution, and capsized him into the kennel — a 
thing which is exceedingly improbable, considering 
that Wordsworth was never tipsy except once in his 
life, yet, on the other hand, is exceeding probable, 
considering that Porson was very seldom otherwise — 
barring this one opening for a collision, there is no 
human possibility or contingency known to insurance 
offices, through which Person ever cmdd have been 
brought to trouble his head about Wordsworth. It 
would have taken three witches, and three broom- 
sticks, clattering about his head, to have extorted from 
Person any attention to a contemporary poet that did 
not give first-rate feeds. And a man that, besides his 
criminal conduct in respect of dinners, actually made 
it a principle to drink nothing but water, would have 
seemed so depraved a character in Person's eyes that, 
out of regard to public decency, he would never have 
mentioned his name, had he even happened to know 
it. " O no ! he never mentioned him." Be assured 
of that. As to Poetry, be it known that Person read 
none whatever, unless it were either political or ob- 
scene. With no seasoning of either sort, " wherefore," 
he would ask indignantly, " should I waste my time 
upon a poem ? " Person had read the Rolliad, because 
it concerned his political party ; he had read the epistle 
of Obereea, Queen of Otaheite, to Sir Joseph Banks, 
because, if Joseph was rather too demure, the poem was 
not. Else, and with such exceptions, he condescended 
not to any metrical writer subsequent to the era of Pope, 
whose Eloisa to Abelard he could say by heart, and 
rould even sing from beginning to end ; which, indeed. 



2/0 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

he ivould do, whether you chose it or not, after a suffi- 
cient charge of brandy, and sometimes even though 
threatened with a cudgel, in case he persisted in his 
molestations. Waller he had also read and occasion- 
ally quoted with effect. But as to a critique on Words- 
worth, whose name had not begun to mount from the 
ground when Porson died,^ as reasonably and charac- 
teristically might it have been put into the mouth of 
the Hetman Platoff. Instead of Porson's criticisms on 
writings which he never saw, let us hear Porson's 
account of a fashionable rout in an aristocratic London 
mansion : it was the only party of distinction that this 
hirsute but most learned Theban ever visited; and his 
history of what passed (comic alike and tragic) is 
better worth preserving than " Brantome," or even than 
Swift's " Memoirs of a Parish Clerk." It was by the 
hoax of a young Cantab that the professor was ever 
decoyed into such a party : the thing was a swindle ; 
but his report of its natural philosophy is not on that 
account the less picturesque : — 

. SouTHET. — Why do you repeat the word rout so often .' 

Porson. — I was once at one by mistake ; and I'eally I saw 
there what you describe ; and this made me repeat the word and 
smile. You seem curious. 
SouTHET. — Rather, indeed. 

Porson. — I had been dining out ; there were some who 
smolied after dinner : within a few hours, the fumes of their 
pipes produced such an eifect on my head that I wa? willing 
to go into the air a little. Still I continued hot and thirsty • 
and an undergraduate, whose tutor was my old acquaintance, 
proposed that we should turn into an oyster-cellar, and refresh 
ourselves with oysters and porter. The rogue, instead of this, 
conducted me to a fashionable house in the neighborhood of St. 



NOIES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 271 

James' ; arnl, altliough I expostulated with him, and insisted 
that we were going up stairs and not down, he appeared to me 
BO ingenuous in his protestations to the contrary that I could 
well disbelieve him no longer. Nevertheless, receiving on the 
stairs many shoves and elbowings, I could not help telling him 
plainly, that, if indeed it was the oyster-cellar in Fleet street, 
tlie company was much altered for the worse ; and that, in 
future, I should frequent another. When the fumes of. the 
pipes had left me, I discovered the deceit by the brilliancy and 
indecency of the dresses ; and was resolved not to fall into 
temptation. Although, to my great satisfaction, no immodest 
proposal was directly made to me, I looked about anxious that 
no other man should know me beside him whose wantonness 
had conducted me thither ; and I would have escaped, if I could 
have found the door, from which every effort I made appeared 
to remove me farther and farther. * * * A pretty woman 
Baid loudly, " He has no gloves on ! " " What nails the crea- 
ture has ! " replied an older one — " Piano-forte keys wanting 
the white." 

I pause to say that this, by all accounts which have 
reached posterity, was really no slander. The profes- 
sor's forks had become rather of the dingiest, probably 
through inveterate habits of scratching up Greek roots 
from diluvian mould, some of it older than Deucalion's 
flood, and very good, perhaps, for turnips, but less so 
for the digits which turn up turnips. What followed, 
however, if it were of a nature to be circumstantially 
repeated, must have been more trying to the sensibili- 
ties of the Greek oracle, and to the blushes of the 
policemen dispersed throughout the rooms, than even 
the harsh critique upon his nails ; which, let the wits 
say what they would in their malice, were no doubt 
washed regularly enough once every three years. 
And, even if they were not, I should say that this is not 



272 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

SO strong a fact as some that are reported about many 
a continental professor. Mrs. CI nt, with the two- 
fold neatness of an Englishwoman and a Quaker, told 
me that, on visiting Pestalozzi, the celebrated educaticjn 
professor, at Yverdun, about 1820, her first impression, 
from a distant view of his dilapidated premises, was 
profound horror at the grimness of his complexion, 
which struck her as no complexion formed by nature, 
but as a deposition from half a century of atmospheric 
rust — a most ancient cerugo. She insisted on a radical 
purification, as a sine qua non towards any interview 
with herself. The mock professor consented. Mrs. CI. 
hired a stout Swiss charwoman, used to the scouring of 
staircases, kitchen floors, &c. ; the professor, whom, on 
this occasion, one may call " the prisoner," was accom- 
modated with a seat (as prisoners at the bar sometimes 
are with us) in the centre of a mighty washing-tub, and 
then scoured through a long summer forenoon, by the 
strength of a brawny Helvetian arm, " And now, my 
dear friends," said Mrs. CI. to myself, " is it thy opinion 
that this was cruel ? Some people say it was ; and J 
wiA to disguise nothing; — it was not mere soap 
that I had him scoured with, but soap and sand ; so 
say honestly, dost thee call that cruel ? " Laughing no 
more than the frailty of my human nature compelled 
me, I replied, " Far from it ; on the contrary, every- 
body must be charmed with her consideration for the 
professor, in not having him cleaned on the same 
pxmciple as her carriage, namely, taken to the stable- 
yard, mopped severely" \^'- Mobhed, dost thee say?" she 
exclaimed. " No, no," I said, " not mobbed, but mopped, 
until the gravel should be all gone "], " then pelted with 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE I.ANDOR. 273 

buckets of water by firemen, and, finally, currycombed 
and rubbed down by two grooms, keeping a sharp 
susurncs between them, so as to soothe his wounded 
feelings ; after all which, a feed of oats might not have 
been amiss." The result, however, of this scouring 
extraordinary was probably as fatal as to Mambrino's 
helmet in Don Quixote. Pestalozzi issued, indeed, 
from the washing-tub like Aeson from Medea's kettle ; 
he took his station amongst a younger and fairer gen- 
eration ; and the dispute was now settled whether he 
belonged to the Caucasian or Mongolian race. But 
his intellect was thought to have suffered seriously. 
The tarnish of fifty or sixty years seemed to have 
acquired powers of reacting as a stimulant upon the 
professor's fancy, through the rete vmcosum, or through 
— Heaven knows what. He was too old to be convert- 
ed to cleanliness ; the Paganism of a neglected person 
at seventy becomes a sort of religion interwoven with 
the nervous system — just as the well-known Plica Po' 
lonica from which the French armies suffered so much 
in Poland, during 1807-8, though produced by neglect 
of the hair, will not be cured by extirpation of the hair. 
The hair becomes matted into Medusa locks, or what 
look like snakes ; and to cut these off is oftentimes to 
cause nervous frenzy, or other great constitutional 
disturbance. I never heard, indeed, that Pestalozzi 
suffered apoplexy from his scouring; but certainly his 
ideas on education grew bewildered, and will be found 
essentially damaged, after that great epoch — his bap- 
tism by water and sand. 

Now, in comparison of an Orson like this man of 
Vverdun — this great Swiss reformer, who might, pe^ 
18 12* 



274 NOTES ox WALTER SAVAGE LANDOK. 

haps, have bred a pet variety of typhns-fevei for hi& own 
separate use — what signify nails, though worse than 
Caliban's or Nebuchadnezzar's ? 

This Greek professor Porson — whose knowledge of 
English was so limited that his total cargo might have 
been embarked on board a walnut-shell, on the bosom 
of a slop-basin, and insured for three halfpence — 
astonishes me, that have been studying English for 
thirty years and upwards, by the strange discoveries 
that he announces in this field. One and all, 1 fear, 
are mares' nests. He -discovered, for instance, on his 
first and last reception amongst aristocratic people, that 
in this region of society a female bosom is called her 
neck. But, if it really liad been so called, I see no 
objection to the principle concerned in such disguises ; 
and I see the greatest to that savage franlcness which 
virtually is indicated with applause in the Porsonian 
remark. Let vis consider. It is not that we cannot 
speak freely of the female bosom, and we do so daily. 
In discussing a statue, we do so without reserve ; and 
in the act of suckling an infant, the bosom of every 
woman is an idea so sheltered by the tenderness and 
sanctity with which all but ruffians invest the organ 
of maternity, that no man scruples to name it, if the 
occasion warrants it. He suppresses it oidy as he 
suppresses the name of God; not as an idea that can 
itself contain any indecorum, but, on the contrary, as 
making other and more trivial ideas to become inde- 
corous when associated with a conception rising so 
much above their own standard. Equally, the words 
affliction, guilt, penitence, remorse, &:c., are proscribed 
from the ordinary current of conversation amongst 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 275 

mere acquaintances; and for the same reason, namely, 
that they touch chords too impassioned and profound 
for harmonizing with the key in which the mere social 
civilities of life are exchanged. Meantime, it is not 
true that any custom ever prevailed in any class of 
calling a woman's bosom her neck. Porson goes on 
to say, that, for his part, he was born in an age when 
people had thighs. Well, a great many people have 
thighs still. ]]ut in all ages there must have been 
many of whom it is lawful to suspect such a fact zo- 
ologically ; and yet, as men honoring our own race, 
and all its veils of mystery, not too openly to insist 
upon it, which, luckily, there is seldom any occasion 
to do. 

Mr. Landor conceives that we are growing worse m 
the pedantries of false delicacy. I think not. His 
own residence in Italy has injured his sense of discrim- 
mation. It is not his countrymen that have grown 
conspicuously more demure and prudish, but he himself 
that has grown in Italy more tolerant of what is really 
a blainable coarseness. Various instances occur in 
these volumes of that faulty compliance with Southern 
grossness. The tendencies of the age, among our- 
selves, lie certainly in one channel towards excessive 
refinement. So far, however, they do but balance the 
opposite tendencies in some other channels. The 
craving for instant effect in style — as it brings forward 
many disgusting Germanisms and other barbarisms — 
as it transplants into literature much slang from the 
street — as it relicts painfully upon the grandeurs of the 
antique scriptural diction, by recalling into colloquiai 
use many consecrated words which thus lose their 



270 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

Gothic beauty — also operates daily amongst journil- 
ists, by the temptations of apparent strength that lurk 
in plain speaking or even in brutality. What other 
temptation, for instance, can be supposed to govern 
those who, in speaking of hunger as it affects our 
paupers, so needlessly affect us by the very coarsest 
English word for the Latin word venter? Surely the 
word stomach would be intelligible to everybody, and 
yet disgust nobody. It would do for him that affectc 
plain speaking; it would do for you and me that revolt 
from gross speaking. Signs from abroad speak the 
very same language, as to the liberal tendencies (in 
this point) of the nineteenth century. Formerly, it 
was treason for a Spaniard, even in a laudatory copy 
of verses, to suppose his own Queen lowered to the 
level of other females by the possession of legs ! Con- 
stitutionally, the Queen w^as incapable of legs. How 
else her Majesty contrived to walk, or to dance, the 
Inquisition soon taught the poet was no concern of his. 
Royal legs for females were an inconceivable thing — 
except amongst Protestant nations ; some of whom the 
Spanish Church affirmed to be even disfigured by tails ' 
Having tails, of course they might have legs. But not 
Catholic Queens; Now-a-days, so changed is all this 
that if you should even express your homage to hei 
Most Catholic Majesty, by sending her a pair of em 
broidered garters — which certainly presuppose \egi> 
— there is no doubt that the Spanish Minister of 
Finance would gratefully carry them to account — or 
the principle that " every little helps." Mr. Person is 
equally wrong, as I conceive, in another illustration 
of this matter, drawn from the human toes, and spe- 



KOVES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 271 

cificall)' from the great toe. It is true, that, in refined 
society, upon any rare necessity arising for alluding to 
so inconsiderable a member of the human statue, gen- 
erally this is done at present by the French term doigU 
de-pied — though not always — as may be seen in 
various honorary certificates granted to chiropodists 
within the last twenty months. And whereas Mr. Por- 
son asks pathetically — What harm has the great toe 
done, that it is never to be named? I answer — The 
greatest harm ; as may be seen in the first act of 
^ Coriolanus," where Menenius justly complains that 
this arrogant subaltern of the crural system, 

" Being basest, meanest, vilest, 



Still goeth foremost." 

Even in the villany of running away from battle, this 
unworthy servant still asserts precedency. I repeat, 
however, that the general tendencies of the age, as to 
the just limits of parrhesia (using the Greek word in a 
sense wider than of old), are moving at present upon 
two opposite tracks ; which fact it is, as in some ether 
lases, that makes the final judgment difficult. 

KOMAN IMPERATOR. 

Mr. Landor, though really learned, often puts his 
learning into his pocket. 

Thus, with respect to the German Empire, Mr. L 
asserts that it was a chimajra ; that the Impermin Ger 
manicum was a mere usage of speech, founded (if J 
understand him) not even in a legal fiction, but in 
a blunder; that a German Imperator never had a true 
historical existence ; and, finally, that even the Roman 



278 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

title of Imperator — which, unquestionnblv, surmount 'd 
in grandeur all titles of honor that ever were or will be 
— ranged in dignity below the title o^ Rex. 

I believe him wrong in every one of these doctrines ; 
let us confine ourselves to the last. The title of Impe- 
rator was not nriginally eitlier above or below the title 
of Eex, or even upon the same levtl ; it was what 
logicians call disparate — it radiated from a difTerent 
centre, precisely as the modern title of Decanus, or 
Dean, which is originally astrological [see the elder 
Scaliger on Manilius], has no relation, whether of 
superiority or equality or inferiority, to the title of 
Colonel, nor the title of Cardinal any such relation to 
that of Field-Marshal ; and quite as little had Rex to 
Imperator. Masters of Ceremonies, or Lord Chamber- 
lains, may certainly create a precedency in favor of 
any title whatever in regard to any other title; but 
such a precedency for any of the cases before us would 
be arbitrary, and not growing out of any internal prin- 
ciple, though useful for purposes of convenience. As 
regards the Roman Imperator, originally like the Ro- 
man Prmtor — this title and the official ranic pointci^ 
exclusively to military distinctions. In process of time 
the PrjEtor came to be a legal officer, and the Impera- 
tor to bt the supreme political officer. But the motive 
for assuming the title of Imperator, as the badge or 
cognizance of the sovereign authority, when the great 
transfiguration of the Republic took place, seems to 
have been this. An essentially new distribution of 
political powers had become necessary, and thif change 
masked itself to Romans, published itself in menaces 
and muttering thunder to foreign states, through the 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDUR. 279 

martial title of Imperator. A new eq\iilibiiuin was 
demanded by the changes which time and luxury and 
pauperism had silently worked on the composition of 
Roman society. If Rome was- to be saved from herself 
— if she was to be saved from the eternal flux and 
reflux — action and reaction — amongst her oligarchy 
of immense estates (which condiiion of things it was 
that forced on the great siiie qua non reforms of Caesar, 
against all the babble of the selfish Cicero, of the 
wicked Cato, and of the debt-ridden Senate) — then it 
was indispensable that a new order of powers should 
be combined for bridling her internal convulsions. To 
carry her ofT from her own self-generated vortex, 
which would, in a very few years, have engulfed her 
and drawn her down into fragments, some machinery 
as new as steam-power was required ; her own native 
sails filled in the v/rong direction. There were already 
powers in the constitution equal to the work, but dis- 
tracted and falsely lodged. These must be gathered 
into one hand. And, yet, as names are all-powerful 
upon our frail race, this recast must be verbally dis- 
guised. The title must be such as, whilst flattering 
the Roman pride, might yet announce to Oriental 
powers a plenipotentiary of Rome who argued all dis- 
puted points, not so much strongly as (an Irish phrase) 
witli "a strong back " — not so much piquing himself 
on Aristotelian syllogisms that came within BaTbary 
and Celarent, as upon thirty legions that stood within 
call. The Consulship was good for little ; that, with 
some reservations, could be safely resigned into subor 
dinate hands. The Consular name, and the name oi 
Senate, which was still suffered to retain an obscure 



280 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LAN'DOR. 

vitality and power of resurrection, continued to throw 
a popular lustre over the government. Millions were 
duped. But the essential offices, the offices in which 
settled the organs of all the life in the administration, 
were these : — 1, of Military Commander-in-Chief (in- 
cluding such a partition of the provinces as might seal 
the authority in this officer's hands, and yet flatter the 
people through the Senate) ; 2, of Censor, so as to 
watch the action of morals and social usages upon 
politics ; 3, of Pontifex Maximus ; 4, and finally, 
of Tribune. The tribunitial power, next after the 
military power, occupied the earliest anxieties of the 
Csesars. All these powers, and some others belonging 
to less dignified functions, were made to run through 
the same central rings (or what in mail-coach harness 
is called the turrets) : the " ribbons " were tossed up to 
one and the same imperial coachman, looking as ami- 
able as he could, but, in fact, a very truculent person- 
age, having powers more unlimited than was always 
safe for himself. And now, after all this change of 
things, what was to be the name 1 By what title should 
men know him? Much depended upon that. The 
tremendous symbols of S. P. Q. R. still remained ; nor 
had they lost their power. On the contrary, the great 
idea of the Roman destiny, as of some vast phantom 
moving under God to some unknown end, was greater 
than ever ; the idea was now so great, that it had 
outgrown all its representative realities. Consul and 
Proconsul would no longer answer, because they rep- 
resented too exclusively the interior or domestic foun- 
tains of power, and not the external relations to the 
terraqueous globe which were beginning to expand with 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 281 

suJden accelerations of velocity. The ceMral povvpr 
could not be forgotten by any who were near enough 
to have tasted its wrath ; but now there was arising a 
necessity for expressing, by some great unity of de- 
nomination, so as no longer to lose the totality in the 
separate partitions — the enormity of the ciraimfereiice. 
A necessity for this had repeatedly been found in nego- 
tiations, and in contests ot ceremonial rank with oriental 
powers, as between ourselves and China. With Persia, 
the greatest of these powers, an instinct of inevitablo 
collisioni** had, for some time, been ripening. It bc' 
came requisite that there should be a representative 
officer for the whole Roman grandeur, and one capable 
of standing on the same level as the Persian king of 
kings ; and this necessity arose at the very same 
moment that a new organization was required of Ro- 
man power for domestic purposes. There is no doubt 
that both purposes were consulted in the choice of th'i 
title of Imperator. The chief alternative title was that 
of Dictator. But to this, as regarded Romans, there 
were two objections — first, that it was a mere provis- 
ional title, always commemorating a transitional emer 
gency, and pointing to some happier condition, wh>ch 
the extraordinary powers of the officer ought socn to 
establish. It was in the nature of a problem, ana con- 
tinually asked for its own solution. The Dictator dic- 
tated. He was the greatest ipse dixit that ever was 
heard of. It reminded the people verbalhj of despotic 
powers and autocracy. Then again, as regarded foreign 
nations, unacquainted with the Roman constitution, and 
throughout the servile East incapable of understanding 
it, the title of Dictator had no meaning at all. Th*. 



282 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

Speaker is a magnificent title in England, and makes 
brave men sometimes shake in their shoes. But, yet, 
if from rustic ignorance it is not understood, even that 
tii'lle means nothing. 

Of the proudest Speaker that England ever saw, 
namely. Sir Edward Seymour, it is recorded that his 
grandeur failed him, sank under him, like the New- 
gate drop, at the very moment when his boiling anger 
most relied upon and required it. He was riding 
near Barnet, when a rustic wagoner ahead of him, 
by keeping obstinately the middle of the road, pre- 
vented him from passing. Sir Edward motioned to 
him magnificently, that he must turn his horses to 
the left. The carter, on some fit of the sulks (perhaps 
from the Jacobinism innate in man), despised this 
pantomime, and sturdily persisted in his mutinous 
disrespect. On which Sir Edward shouted — " Fellow, 
do you know who I am ? " " Noo-ah" replied our 
rebellious friend, meaning, when faithfully translated, 
no. "Are you aware, sirrah," said Sir Edward, now 
thoroughly incensed, " that I am the right honorable 
the Speaker ? At your peril, sir, in the name of 
the Commons of England, in Parliament assembled, 
quarter instantly to the left." This was said in that 
dreadful voice which sometimes reprimanded penitent 
offenders, kneeling at the bar of the House. The 
carter, more struck by the terrific tones than the 
words, spoke an aside to " Dobbin " (his " thill " horse), 
which procured an opening to the blazing Spep.ker, 
and then replied thus — " Speaker! Why, if so be as 
thou canst speak, whoy-y-y-y-y " (in the tremulous un- 
dulation with which he was used to utter his sovereig-n 



^rOFES 0^ WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 283 

\vl)oah-li-h-h to his horses), " "\vhoy-)-y-y didn't-a speuk 
afore ? " The wagoner, it set'ined, had presumed Sir 
Edward, from his inute pantomime, to be a dumb man ; 
and -all which the proud Speaker gained, by the 
proclamation of his style and title, was, to be exoner- 
ated from that suspicion, but to the heavy discredit of 
hi:, sanity. A Roman Dictator stood quite as poor a 
chance with foreigners, as our Speaker with a rustic, 
"Dictator! let him dictate to his wife; but he sha'n't 
dictate to us." Any title, to prosper with distant 
nations, must rest upon the basis of arms. And this 
fell in admirably with the political exigency for Rome 
herself. The title of Imperator was liable to no 
jealousy. Being entirely a military title, it clashed 
with no civil pretensions whatever. Being a military 
title, that recorded a triumph over external enemies in 
the field, it was dear to the patriotic heart; whilst it 
directed the ej'e to a quarter where all increase of 
power was concurrent with increase of benefit to the 
State. And again, as the honor had been hitherto 
purely titular, accompanied by some axictorUas, in the 
Roman sense (not always honor, for Cicero was an 
Imperator for Cilician exploits, which he reports with 
laughter), but no separate authority in our modern 
sense. Even in military circles it was open to little 
jealousy ; nor apparently could ripen into a shape that 
ever would be so, since, according to all precedent, it 
would be continually balanced by the extension of the 
iame title, under popular military suffrage, to other 
fortunate leaders. Who could foresee, at the inaugu- 
ration of this reform, that this precedent would be 
abolished ? who could cfuess that henceforwards no 



2S4 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

more triumphs (but only a sparing distribution )f 
triumphal decorations), henceforwards no more im- 
peratorial titles for anybody out of the one consecrated 
family ? AH this was hidden in the bosom of the 
earliest Imperator ; he seemed, to the great mass of 
the people, perfectly innocent of civic ambition ; he 
rested upon his truncheon, that is, upon S. P. Q. R. ; like 
Napoleon, he said, "I am but the first soldier of the 
republic," that is, the most dutiful of her servants ; and, 
like Napoleon, under cover of this martial paludavien- 
turriy he had soon filched every ensign of authority by 
which the organs of public power could speak. But, 
at the beginning, this title of Imperator was the one 
by far the best fitted to mask all this, to disarm sus- 
picion, and to win the confidence of the people. 

The title, therefore, began in something like impos- 
ture ; and it was not certainly at first the gorgeous 
title into which it afterwards blossomed. The earth 
did not yet ring with it. The rays of its diadem were 
not then the first that said All hail! to the rising — 
the last that said Fareivell ! to the setting sun. But 
still it was already a splendid distinction ; and, in a 
Roman ear, it must have sounded fiir above all com- 
petition from the trivial title (in that day) of " Rex," 
unless it were the Persian Rex, namely, " Rex Regum." 
Romans gave the title; they stooped not to accept it.^i 
Even Mark Antony, in the all-magnificent description 
of him by Shakspeare's Cleopatra, could give it in 
showers — kings waited in his ante-room, "and from his 
pocket fell crowns and sceptres." The title of Imperator 
was indeed repeated in glory that transcended the glory 
of earth, but it was not, therefore, sown in dishonor. 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 285 

We are all astonished at Mr. Landor — myself and 
three hundred select readers. What can he mean by 
tilting against the Imperator — Semper Augustus? 
Before him the sacred fire (that ^burned from century 
to century) went pompously in advance — before him 
the children of Europe and Asia — of Africa and the 
islands, rode as dorypheroi ; his soviatophulakes were 
princes ; and his empire, when burning out in Byzar- 
tium, furnished from its very ruins the models for our 
western honors and ceremonial. Had it even begun 
in circumstances of ignominy, that would have been 
cured easily by its subsequent triumph. Many are the 
titles of earth that have found a glory in looking back 
to the humiiitv of their origin as its most memorable 
feature. The fisherman who sits upon Mount Pala- 
tine, in some respects the grandest of all potentates, 
as one wielding both earthly and heavenly thunders, is 
the highest example of this. Some, like the Mame- 
lukes of Egypt and the early Janizaries of the Porte, 
have glorified themselves in being slaves. Others, 
like the Caliphs, have founded their claims to men's 
homage in the fact of being s7/ccessors to those who 
(between ourselves) were knaves. And once it hap- 
pened to Professor Wilson and myself, that we trav- 
elled in the same post-chaise with a most agreeable 
madman, who, amongst a variety of other select facts 
which he communicated, was kind enough to give us 
the following etymological account of our much- 
respected ancestors the Saxons; which furnishes a 
further illustration (quite unknown to the learned) of 
the fact — that honor may glory in deducing itself 
from circumstances of humility. He assured us that 



2S6 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOK. 

these worthy Pagans were a league, comprehending 
every single brave man of German blood ; so much 
so, that on sailing away they left that unhappy land 
in a state of universal cowardice, which accounts for the 
li:king it subsequently received from Napoleon. The 
Saxons were very poor, as brave men too often are. 
[ii fact they had no breeches, and, of course, no silk 
stockings. They had, however, sacks, which they 
mounted on their backs, whence naturally their name 
iSax-on. Sacks-071 ! was the one word of command, 
and that spoken, the army was ready. In reality it 
was treason to take them off. But this indorsement 
of their persons was not assumed on any Jewish prin- 
ciple of humiliation ; on the contrary, in the most 
flagrant spirit of defiance to the whole race of man. 
For they proclaimed that, having no breeches nor silk 
stockings of their own, they intended, v\^ind and weather 
permitting, to fill these same sacks with those of other 
men. The Welshmen then occupying England were 
reputed to have a good stock of both, and in quest of 
this Welsh wardrobe the Sacks-on army sailed. With 
what success it is not requisite to say, since here in 
one post-chaise, four hundred and thirty years after, 
were three of their posterity, the professoi*, the mad- 
man, and myself, indorsees (as you may say) of the 
original indorsers, who were all well equipped with 
the object of this great Sacks-on exodus. 

It is true that the word emperor is not in every 
situation so impressive as the word Iii7ig. But that 
arises in part from the latter word having less of 
specialty about it ; it is more catholic, and to that 
extent more poetic ; and in part from accidents ol 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 28T 

position which disturb the relations of many other 
titles besides. The Froconsul had a grander sound, as 
regarded military expeditions, than the principal from 
whom he emanated. The Siireiia left a more awful 
remembrance of his title upon the comrades of Julian 
in his Persian expedition than the Surena's master. 
And there are many cases extant m which the word 
angel strikes a deeper key — cases where pow"er is con- 
templated, as well as beauty or mysterious existence — 
than the word archangel, though confessedly higher in 
the hierarchies of heaven. 

Let me now draw the reader's attention to Count 
Julian, a great conception of Mr. Landor's. 

The fable of Count Julian (that is, when compre- 
hending all the parties to that web, of which he is the 
centre) may be pronounced the grandest which mod- 
ern history unfolds. It is, and it is 7iot, scenical. In 
some portions (as the fate so mysterious of Roderick, 
and in a higher sense of Julian) it rises as much above 
what the stage could illustrate, as does Thermopylas 
above the petty details of narration. The man was 
mad that, instead of breathing from a hurricane of 
harps some mighty ode over Thermopylae, fancied the 
little conceit of weaving it into a metrical novel or suc- 
cession of incidents. Yet, on the other hand, though 
rising higher. Count Julian sinks lower : though the 
passions rise far above Troy, above Marathon, above 
ThermopyloB, and are such passions as could not have 
existed under Paganism, in some respects they conde- 
scend and preconform to the stage. The characters 
are all different, all marked, all in position; by which, 
never assuming fixed attitudes as to purpose and inter- 



2SS NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

est, the passions are deliriously complex, and the situa 
tions are of corresponding grandeur. Metius Fuffetius, 
Alban traitor ! that wert torn limb from limb by antag- 
onist yet confederate chariots, thy tortures, seen by 
shuddering armies, were not comparable to the unseen 
tortures in Count Julian's mind; who — whether his 
treason prospered or not, whether his dear outraged 
daughter lived or died, whether his king were tram- 
pled in the dust by the horses of infidels, or escaped 
as a wreck from the fiery struggle, whether his dear 
native Spain fell for ages under misbelieving hounds, 
or, combining her strength, tossed ofT them, but then 
also himself, with one loathing from her shores — saw, 
as he looked out into the mighty darkness, and stretched 
out his penitential hands vainly for pity or for pardon, 
nothing but the blackness of ruin, and ruin that was 
too probably to career through centuries. " To this 
pass," as Cgesar said to his soldiers at Pharsalia, " had 
his enemies reduced him ; " and Count Julian might 
truly say, as he stretched himself a rueful suppliant 
before the Cross, listening to the havoc that was driving 
onwards before the dogs of the Crescent, "M?/ enemies, 
because they would not remember that I was a man, 
forced me to forget that I was a Spaniard : — to forget 
thee, O native Spain, — and, alas! thee, faith of 
Christ ! " 

The story is wrapped in gigantic mists, and looms 
upon one like the Grecian fable of CEdipus ; and there 
will be great reason for disgust, if the deep Arabic re- 
searches now going on in the Escurial, or at Vienna, 
should succeed in stripping it of its grandeurs. For, 
as it stands at present, it is the most fearful lesson 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANUOR. 289 

extant of the great moral, that crime propagates crime, 
and violence inherits violence ; nay, a lesson on the 
awful necessity which exists at times, that one tremen- 
dous wrong should blindly reproduce itself in endless 
retaliatory wrongs. To have resisted the dread temp- 
tation, would have needed an angel's nature; to have 
yielded, is but human; should it, then, plead in vain 
for pardon ? and yet, by some mystery of evd, to have 
perfected this human vengeance, is, finally, to land all 
parties alike, oppressor and oppressed, in the passions 
of hell. 

Mr. Landor, who always rises with his subject, and 
dilates like Satan into Teneriffe or Atlas, when he sees 
be tore him an antagonist worthy of his powers, is' prob- 
ably the one man in Europe that has adequately con- 
ceived the situation, the stern self-dependency and the 
monumental misery of Count Julian. That sublimity 
of penitential grief, which cannot accept consolation 
from man, cannot hear external reproach, cannot con- 
descend to notice insult, cannot so much as see the 
curiosity of by-standers ; that awful carelessness of 
all but the troubled deeps within his own heart, and of 
God's spirit brooding upon their surface, and searching 
their abysses, never was so majestically described as in 
the following lines ; it is the noble Spaniard, Hernando, 
comprehending and loving Count Julian in the midst of 
his treasons, who speaks: — Tarik, the gallant Moor, 
having said that at' last the Count must be happy ; for 
that 

•' Delicious calm 
Follows the fierce enjoyment of revenge." 

Hernando replies thus : — 

19 13 



290 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

" That calm was never his ; no other icill be. 
Kot victorj', that o'ershadows him, sees he. 
No airy and light pas-^ion stirs abi'oad 
To ruffle or to soothe him ; all are quelled 
Beneath a mightier, sterner, stress of mind. 
Wakeful he sits, and lonely, and unmoved. 
Beyond the arrows, shouts, and views of men^ 
As oftentimes an eagle, ere the sun 
Throws o'er the varj'ing earth his early ray. 
Stands solitary — stands immovable 
Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye, 
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabased, 
In the cold light above the dews of morn." 

One change suggests itself to me us possibly for the 
Letter, namely, if the magnificent line — 

" Beyond the arrows, shouts, and views of men " — 

were transferred to the secondary object, the eagle, 
placed after what is jiojv the last line, it would give a 
fuller rythmus to the close of the entire passage ; it 
would be more literally applicable to the majestic and 
solitary bird, than to the majestic and solitary man ; 
whilst the figurative expression even more impassioned 
might be found for the utter self-absorpiion of Count 
Julian's spirit — too grandly sorrowful to be capable of 
disdain. 

It completes the picture of this ruined prince, that 
Hernando, the sole friend (except his daughter) still 
cleaving to him, dwells with yearning desire upon his 
death, knowing the necessity of this consummation to 
his own secret desires, knowing the forgiveness which 
would settle upon his memory after that last penalty 
should have been paid for his errors, comprehending 
the peace that would then ?^ wallow up the storm : — 



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. S91 

•• For his own sake I could endure his loss. 
Pray for it, and thank God : yet mourn I must 
Him above all, so great, so bountiful. 
So blessed once ! " 

It is no satisfaction to Hernando tliat Julian should 
'' yearn for death with speechless love," but Julian does 
so ; and it is in vain now amongst these irreparable 
ruins, to wish it otherwise. 

" 'T is not my solace that 't is i- his desire : 
Of all who pass us in life's drear descent 
We grieve the most for those who wished to die." 

How much, then, is in this brief drama of Count 
Julian, chiselled, as one might think, by the hands of 
that sculptor who fancied the great idea of chiselling 
Mount Athos into a demigod, which almost insists oc 
being quoted ; which seems to rebuke and frown on 
one for not quoting it : passages to which, for their 
solemn grandeur, one raises one's hat as at night in 
walking under the Coliseum ; passages which, for their 
luxury of loveliness, should be inscribed on the phy- 
lacteries of brides, or upon the frescoes of Ionia, illus- 
trated by the gorgeous allegories of Rubens. 

" Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparibile tempus. 
Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore." 

Yet, reader, in spite of time, one word more on the 
subject we are quitting. Father Time is certainly be- 
come very importunate and clamorously shrill since he 
has been fitted up with that horrid railway whistle ; 
and even old Mother Space is growing rather imperti- 
nent, when she speaks out of monthly journals licensed 
to carry but small quantities of bulky goods ; yet one 
thing I must say in spite of them both. 



292 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

It is, that although we have had from men of memo- 
rable genius, Shelley in particular, both direct and 
mdirect attempts (some of them powerful attempts"* 
to realize the g^eat idea of Prometheus, which idea 
is so great, that (like the primeval majesties of Hu 
man Innocence, of Avenging Deluges that are past^ 
of Fiery Visitations yet to come) it has had strength 
to pass through many climates, and through many 
religions, without essential loss, but surviving, without 
tarnish, every furnace of chance and change ; so it is 
that, after all has been done which intellectual power 
could do since jEschylus (and since Milton in his 
Satan), no embodiment of the Promethean situation, 
none of the Promethean character, fixes the attentive 
eye upon itself with the same secret feeling of fidelity 
to the vast archetype, as Mr. Landor's " Count Julian." 
There is in this modern aerolith the same jewelly 
lustre, which cannot be mistaken ; the same " non 
imitabile fulgur^'' and the same character of " fracture," 
or cleavage, as mineralogists speak, for its beaming 
iridescent grandeur, redoubling under the crush of 
misery. The color and the coruscation are the same 
when splintered by violence ; the tones of the rocky ^^ 
harp are the same when swept by sorrow. There is 
the same spirit of heavenly persecution against his 
enemy, persecution that would have hung upon his 
rear, and " burned after him to the bottomless pit," 
though it had yawned for both ; there is the same gulf 
fixed between the possibilities of their reconciliation, 
the same immortality of resistance, the same abysmal 
anguish. Did Mr. Landor consciously cherish this, 
.^schylean ideal in composing " Count Julian " ? ) 

bnnw nnt : iht^rp, it is. 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 244. 

"Southey affirmed: " — namely, in the " Letters of Espriella," 
»n imaginary Spaniard on a visit to England, about the year 1810. 

Note 2. Page 246. 

" Too much wealth : " — Mr. Landor, who should know best, 
speaks of himself (once at least), as " poor ; " but that is all non- 
Bense. I have known several people with annual incomes border- 
ing on twenty thousand pounds, who spoke of themselves, and 
seemed seriously to think themselves, unhappy " paupers." Lady 
Hester Stanhope, with twenty-seven hundred pounds a year (of 
which about twelve arose from her go vei-nment pension), and with- 
out one solitary dependent in her train, thought herself rich enough 
to become a queen (an Arabic malekij) in the Syrian mountains, 
but an absolute pauper for London ; *' for how, you know" (aa 
she would say, pathetically), "could the humblest of spinsters 
live decently upon that pittance ? ' ' 

Note 3. Page 249. 

" From Hegel : " — I am not prepared with an affidavit that 
no man ever read Mr. Hegel, that great master of the impenetraltle. 
But sulhoieiit evidence of that fact, as I conceive, may be drawn 
from thjse who have written commentaries upon him. 

(293) 



294 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

Note 4. Page 258, 

Wale (Germauice wahl), the old ballad word for choice. But 
the motive for using it in this place is in allusion to an excellent 
old Scottish story (not sufficiently known in the south), of a rus- 
tic laird, who profited by the hospitality of his neighbors, 
duly to get drunk once (and no more) every lawful night, 
returning in the happiest frame of mind under the escort of 
his servant Andrew. In spite of Andrew, however, it sometimes 
happened that the laird fell off his horse ; and on one of these occa- 
sions, as he himself was dismounted from his saddle, his wig was 
dismounted from his cranium. Both fell into a peat-moss, and 
both were fished out by Andrew. But the laird, in his confusion, 
putting on the wig wrong side before, reasonably " jaloused " that 
this could not be his own wig, but some other man's, which sus- 
picion he communicated to Andrew, who argued contra by the 
memorable reply — "Hout, laird! there's nae wale o' wigs i' a 
peat-moss." 

Note 5. Page 259, 

Milton, in uttering his grief (but also his hopes growing out 
of his grief) upon a similar tragedy, namely, the massacre of 
the Protestant women and children by " the bloody Piedmontese," 

Note 6, Page 263, 

"Modern military life:^' — By modern I mean since the 
opening of the thirty years' war. In this war, the sack, or partial 
sack, of Magdeburg, will ccaur to the reader as one of the worst 
amongst martial ruffianisms. But this happens to be a hoax. It 
is an old experience, that, when once the demure mu-se of history 
has allowed herself to tell a lie, she never retracts it. Many are 
the falsehoods in our own history, which our children read tradi- 
tionally for truths, merely because our uncritical grandfathers 
believed them to be such, Magdeburg was not sacked. What 
iault there was in the ease belonged to the King of Sweden, who 
certainly was remiss in this instance, though with excuses moro 
than were hearkened to at that time. Tilly, the Bavarian general 
had no reason for severity in this case, and showed none. AcccVvi 



NOTES. 295 

mg to the regular routine of war, Magdeburg had become forfeited 
to military execution ; "whicli, let the reader remember, was not, 
in those days, a right of the general as against the enemy, and by 
way of salutary warning to other cities, lest they also should abuse 
the right of a reasonable defence, but was a right of the soldiery 
as against their own leaders. A town stormed was then a little 
perquisite to the ill-fed and ill-paid soldiers. So of prisoners. If 
I made a prisoner of " Signer Drew" [see Henry V.], it was my 
business to fix his ransom ; tlie general had no business to inter- 
fere with that. Magdeburg, therefore, had incurred the common 
penalty (which she must have foreseen) of obstinacy ; and the only 
difference between her case and that of many another brave little 
town, that quietly submitted to the usual martyrdom, without howl 
ing through all the speaking-trumpets of history, was this — that 
the penalty was, upon Magdeburg, but partially enforced. Harte, 
the tutor of Lord Chesterfield's son, first published, in his Life of 
Gustavus Adolphus, an authentic diary of what passed at that 
time, kept by a Lutheran clergyman. This diary shows suflSciently 
that no real departures were made from the customary routine, 
except in the direction of mercy. But it is evident that the people 
of Magdeburg were a sort of German hogs, of whom, it is notori- 
ous, that if you attempt in the kindest way to shear them, all you 
get is horrible yelling, and (the proverb asserts) very little wool. 
The case being a classical one in the annals of military outrages, 
I have noticed its real features. 

Note 7. Page 266. 

'* Melanchthon's profound theory." — That the reader may not 
suppose me misrepresenting Mr. L., I subjoin his words, p. 224, 
vol. 1 : — " The evil of idolatry is this — rival nations have raised 
up rival deities ; war hath been denounced in the name of Heaven ; 
men have been murdered for the love of God ; and such impiety 
hatli darkened all the regions of the woi'ld, that the Lord of all 
things hath been mocked by all simultaneously as the Lord of 
hosts." The evil of idolatry is, not that it disfigures the Deity 
(in which, it seems, there might be no great harm), but that one 
man's disfiguration differs from another man's ; which leads to 
quarrelling, and that to fighting 



296 NOTES ON Vi/'ALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

Note 8. Page 267. 

" Grecian disguise : " — The true German name of this learned 
reformer was Schwarzerd (black earth) ; but the homeliness and 
pun-provoking quality of such a designation induced Melanchthon 
to mask it in Greek. By the way, I do not understand how Mr. 
Laudor, the arch-purist in orthography, reconciles his spelling of 
the name to Greek orthodoxy ; there is no Greek word that could 
be expressed by the English syllable " cthon." Such a word as 
Melancthon* would be a hybrid monster — neither fish, flesh, nor 
good red herring. 

Note 9. Page 270. 

An equal mistake it is in Mr. Landor to put into the mouth of 
Porson any vituperation of Mathias as one that had uttered opin- 
ions upon Wordsworth. In the Puisuits of Literature, down to 
the fifteenth edition, there is no mention of Wordsworth's name. 
Southey is mentioned slightingly, and chiefly with reference to his 
then democratic principles ; but not Coleridge, and not Words- 
worth. Mathias soon after went to Italy, where he passed the 
remainder of his life — died, I believe, and was buried — never, 
perhaps, having heard the name of Wordsworth. As to Porson, 
it is very true that Mathias took a few liberties with his private 
habits, such as his writing paragraphs in the little cabinet fitted 
up for the ge7is de plume, at the Morning Chronicle office, and 
other trifles. But these, though impertinences, were not of a 
nature seriously to oflend. They rather flattered, by the interest 
which they argued in his movements. And with regard to Per- 
son's main pretension, his exquisite skill in Greek, Mathias was 
not the man to admire this too little ; his weakness, if in that 
point he had a weakness, lay in the opposite direction. His own 
Greek was not a burthen that could have foundered a camel ; he 
was neither accurate, nor extensive, nor profound. But yet Mr. 
Landor is wrong in thinking that he drew it from an Index. In 

* The reader of this edition will notice that the American printer has altered 
the spelling ia the I'^xt, without reference to Mr. De Quincey's remarks on Mr 

L'lador's mtthoj. 



NOTES. 297 

uia Italian, he had the advantage probably of Mr. Landor himself; 
at least he ■wrote it with more apparent fluency and compass. 

Note 10. Page 281. 

Herod the Great, and his father Autipater, owed the favor of 
R')me, and, finally, the throne of Judtca, to the seasonable elec- 
tion which they made between Rome and Persia ; but made not 
without some doubts, as between forces hardly yet brought to a 
satisfactory equation. 

Note 11. Page 284. 

"Stooped not to accept it." — The notion that Julius Coesar, 
who of all men must have held cheapest the title of Rex, had 
seriously intrigued to obtain it, arose (as I conceive) from two 
mistakes — first. From a misintei'pretation of a figurative cere- 
mony in the pageant of the Lupercalia. The Romans were 
ridiculously punctilious in this kind of jealousy. They charged 
Pompey, at one time, with a plot for making himself king, be- 
cause he wore white bandages I'ound his thighs ; now white, in 
olden days, was as much the regal color as purple. Think, dear 
reader, of us — of you and me — being charged with making 
ourselves kings, because we may choose to wear white cotton 
drawers. Pompey was very angry, and swore bloody oaths that 
it was not ambition which had cased his thighs in white fascice 
"Why, what is it then?" said a grave citizen. "What is it, 
man?" replied Pompey, " it is rheumatism." Dogberry must 
have had a hand in this charge : — " Dost thou hear, thou varlet ? 
Thou art charged with incivism ; and it shall go hard with mo 
but I will prove thee to thy fixce a false knave, and guilty of flat 
rheumatism." The other reason which has tended to confirm pos- 
terity in the belief that Cassar really coveted the title of Rex, was 
the confusion of the truth arising with Greek writers. Basileus, 
the term by which indiffei'ently they designated the mighty Artax- 
erxes and the pettiest regulus, was the original translation used 
for Iinperaior. Subsequently, and especiall}' after Dioclesian had 
approximated the aulic pomps to eastern models, the terms .duto- 



298 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

crator, Kaisar, Augustus, Sebastos, &c., came more into use. But 
after Trajan's time, or even to that of Commodus, generally the 
same terms which expressed Imperator and Imperitorial [viz., 
Basileus and Basilikos'] to a Grecian ear expressed Rex and 
Regalis. 

Note 12. Page 291. 

"Tis;" — Scotchmen and Irishmen (for a reason which 
it may be elsewhere worth while explaining) make the same 
mistake of supposing '< is and 'i was admissible in prose ; which is 
sliocking to an English ear, for since 1740 they have become essen- 
tially poetic forms, and cannot, without a sense of painful aifecta- 
tion and sentimentality, be used in conversation or in any mode 
of prose. Mr. Landor does not make ihat mistake, but the redu- 
plication of the H is in this line, — will he permit me to say ? — is 
dreadful. He is wide awake to such blemishes in other men of all 
nations ; so am I. He blazes away all day long against the tres- 
passes of that class, like a man in spring, protecting corn-fields 
against birds. So do I at times. And if ever I publish that work 
on Style, which for years has been in preparation, I fear that, from 
Mr. Landor, it will be necessary to cull some striking flaws in 
composition, were it only that in his works must be sought some 
of its most striking brilliancies. 

Note 13. Page 292. 

" Rocky harp :^' — There are now known other cases, besides 
the ancient one of Memnon's statue, in which the "deep-grooved " 
granites, or even the shifting sands of wildernesses, utter myste- 
rious music to ears that watch and wait for the proper combina- 
tion of circumstances. 




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